


Janus

by sinnar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Ability Swap, Background Relationships, Body Dysphoria, Body Swap, Flame Harmonization (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Gen, HP Next Gen, Harry-Is-Skull - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Past Relationships, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Memory Merging, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, MoD!Harry, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Skull-Is-Harry, Soul Bond, Tags May Change, Violence, canon is a canvas & i am a 4 yr old child w buckets of paint abt to go absolutely apeshit on it, expect most of the canon hp pairs, fic is decidedly not britpicked, implied/referenced psychological torture, ok folks....i'll be the first to admit it gets a little weird here, partially inspired by parent trap - take of that what you will, plot is absolutely an excuse for body swap shenanigans, poor communication in general, this is the most self-indulgent thing i've written and boy that says a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2020-06-25 19:23:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19752220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnar/pseuds/sinnar
Summary: There were plenty of things about this situation that Harry was less than thrilled about - the kidnapping, for one, though that seemed fairly obvious. Getting stuck in the body of a stranger wasn’t quite the joyful occasion either. Having that stranger running around inhisbody, even less so - all this, of course, ignoring the fact that he couldn't use his magic anymore.Well, it wasn't like things could get worse....What did themafiahave to do with this?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a s-u-p-e-r long a/n to get the party started! 
> 
> first and foremost: i'm gonna be straight up with y'all: i haven't read or watched khr in a LONG time. as in, it's been a few years. i'm still familiar with a lot of the general stuff but the smaller details might get mixed up or confused here. i've consulted the wiki for a few things so i _think_ it should be alright, but any mistakes you see regarding khr are entirely my fault, and if you see any glaring ones please let me know and i'll see if i can fix it. 
> 
> also, while we're still talking abt research... i've checked some random khr/hp facts now and then, and i've occasionally googled something inane like 'when does the sun rise in valencia in october' & checked up on some stuff, but most of this fic hasn't been researched tbh, mostly bc i'm writing this fic for fun & to de-stress & endlessly researching things so they're completely accurate... isn't fun and stress-free for me. if that bothers you, i understand completely! this fic just might not be for you, but i hope that you do find one you like! thank you for giving this story a chance. 
> 
> credit where credit is due! the concept of harmonization in this fic belongs to Araceil and Reighost, who (i believe) came up with it! it does not belong to me, i am merely borrowing it. they both have profiles on ao3 & ffn (and some amazing khr, hp, & khr/hp fics!!) and tumblr blogs under the same usernames (i think?)! go check them out and show them some love!!
> 
> also, credit to all the skull-is-harry fics out there that inspired this story! i haven't read a lot, but there are some pretty good ones out there!! (also if y'all have any recs for any other stories.... i mean.... 👀👀👀)
> 
> ....btw y'all might think im joking when i say that every single part of the plot was constructed as an excuse for body swap shenanigans.... im really not. my og inspiration was thinking 'i want to do a body swap w shenanigans' and this monster mutated out of that. you might think 'wait, even that part? or THAT part? or THIS part???' the answer is always yes. all of it.
> 
> EDIT 01/31/20: no major changes, just cleaning up some typos and fixing wonky phrasing, etc, etc. no major face-lift here, folks, just cosmetics

Consciousness came gradually, little drips of it trickling through the darkness - then crashed down on Harry all at once. Awakening with a groan, Harry blinked his eyes open as he sat up abruptly, hands reaching up automatically to push his glasses up his nose, and instead only succeeding in groping uselessly at his face. Harry cast his eyes around the floor, squinting in an attempt to see if his glasses had perhaps just fallen off, and were indeed just lying next to him. 

No such luck. 

Harry frowned reflexively, then let his eyes dart around the room, all traces of sleepiness vanished, replaced instead with a growing sense of befuddlement. 

He was sitting on a smooth stone floor, in a tiny basement room. A narrow window was perched high on a wall to his right, and through it a ray of sunshine beamed through, dimly illuminating the room with a warm glow. There was a metal door across from Harry, thick and imposing, and, most importantly, closed. 

A blob of grey sat in the corner to Harry’s right, a confusing mass of fuzzy, faded purple splayed atop it. Harry squinted further, the details sharpening _just_ enough - it was a man, sitting dressed in grey robes, with his hair (messy and unkempt, and very, very purple) the aforementioned fuzzy mess. His back was to the wall, his arms wrapped around his knees, which were pulled to his chest. He wasn’t moving all that much, but when Harry strained his ears, he could make out the quiet puffs of breath coming from the man, in a familiar slow and steady rhythm. Asleep, then. 

Harry glanced down at himself, wrinkling his nose when he saw he was clad in the same grey robes as the man in the corner. What had happened to his clothes? For that matter - where was his bag? His wand? His _glasses_? Harry patted himself down quickly, frown deepening as he failed to locate any of his belongings. He slowed his frantic searching and clenched his hands into fists, forcing himself to stay calm. 

What had happened?”

Last Harry could remember, he had been settling himself down at a table in a cafe, drink in hand, waiting to meet Teddy. He hadn’t had the opportunity to see his godson in months - Teddy busy with work, Harry busy with travel - and he and Teddy were finally going to be in the same city at the same time, so of course Harry had leapt at the chance. 

Teddy had seemed stressed over their last Floo call. Work, he had said, waving off Harry’s concern. Nothing to worry about, really. 

Harry worried regardless. He had been hoping to ask Teddy about it - to see if he could help relieve Teddy’s burden even a little bit, but…

It didn’t seem he had quite managed to make it to their meeting. 

Harry focused on keeping his breaths even and calm. In situations like these, Harry had learned - mostly through experience, admittedly - that anger and panic didn’t generally serve as helpful tools. He needed a clear head - as clear as possible - and for that, he needed to stay calm. 

Ergo, deep breaths in, deep breaths out. 

If he was being held captive somewhere - as current evidence seemed to suggest - it made sense that his wand and bag had been taken. Taking his clothing and glasses in addition seemed a little bit of an overkill, but Harry could see some logic in it - beyond the psychological impact, one never knew what a wizard had up their sleeve. Better - and easier - to just take the lot of it, rather than deal with any unpleasant surprises later. Whoever had engineered this was either smart enough not to risk it, or just extremely paranoid. Possibly a mix of both, which was always fun. 

He didn’t even have shoes. Or socks. Harry risked a quick peek just to confirm and - yeah, they had even changed his underwear. Harry made a face, and rubbed his cold feet together to try and generate some warmth. _Paranoid_ was certainly one word for it. He glanced around the room again, squinting at the floor as if would find his wand discarded in a corner. 

Or his glasses. 

Or even a pair of socks. 

Whichever came first. 

Harry clicked his tongue in agitation, and ran his right hand through his hair - freezing midway through the motion, eyes caught on a bit of metal gleaming dully from his wrist. Harry lowered his hand and rolled the sleeve of his robe upwards in quick, jerky motions, revealing a bracelet clasped snuggly around his wrist. He ran a finger around the edges of it thoughtfully, feeling the smooth, worn quality of the metal as he raised it closer to his face to examine it better. 

It was thin and long - almost the length of Harry’s pinky - and silver in color. Incredibly lightweight - Harry hadn’t even noticed he’d been wearing anything, and even now he didn’t feel a difference, twisting his wrist around contemplatively. Quite the achievement, considering how closely it hugged his skin. 

All of that seemed of secondary importance to the main feature of the bracelet - the carefully, professionally engraved runes and symbols that encircled it, intertwined in a way that spoke of a mastery of the craft. Harry hadn’t the slightest clue what any of them could mean, having never studied runes - that had always been more Hermione’s forte than his - but he did have the _slightest_ inkling that whatever the purpose of the bracelet was, it couldn’t mean anything good for him. Call it intuition. Or experience. 

Harry lowered his wrist and turned it this way and that, running his fingertips over it, trying to find a way to unclasp it. Unsuccessful in that endeavor, Harry grasped it and gave it a careful tug. It didn’t budge. Harry frowned and tugged harder - then, when that yielded no results, tried to pry it away from his skin. His fingers scrabbled at the edge, unable to find a hold, or slip under and find purchase. The bracelet hugged his skin so closely it was virtually melded to it - Harry couldn’t even fit one of his fingernails between the two. 

Harry grimaced to himself and tugged the sleeve of the robe back over the bracelet, hiding it from view once more. 

What was the bracelet for? Who had made it, who had put it on him, who had brought him here? _Why_?

Harry didn’t have any answer. He rubbed at his eyes - wishing, again, that he had his glasses - and then pushed himself to his feet and stepped over to the door, tapping a fingernail against it contemplatively. There was a thin window at eye level, but peering into it revealed nothing but darkness. Running his hands over the door was a fruitless endeavor - there was no handle, and no way to push or slide it open. 

Unless, of course, one had magic. 

His wand had been taken, but Harry wasn’t utterly helpless without it - he wouldn’t be able to do _quite_ as much as he could manage with a wand, but he wagered that could manage enough to get himself out of here. 

Hopefully. 

Harry stepped back and gave the door a considering look. What spell to use? There was always _Alohomora_ , of course, but it was fairly easy to bewitch locks against the usage of such a charm. If they had been thorough enough to take Harry’s clothes, they were probably thorough enough to anticipate that such a spell might be used. 

…That it, if they even thought he would be able to manage wandless magic. Not many wizards could, after all. Taking his wand and clothing might have been enough security for them. Would they enchant a door against magic if they thought Harry could not _use_ magic?

Well. 

Only one way to find out. If it didn’t work, no harm done. Harry could try another spell. 

He waved his hand at the lock and said, “ _Alohomora_.”

The bracelet on his wrist heated up rapidly, almost to the point of pain - and then Harry felt his legs buckle beneath him, his breath slamming out of him with a sharp wheeze as he crumpled to the floor. His right arm spasmed uncontrollably, painfully. Harry let out a pained gasp and curled into himself gingerly, riding out the jolting, burning aftershocks. It felt as though maybe he had run, utterly unprepared, into a wall of sizzling electricity - or rather, more precisely, as though the wall of electricity had run into _him_. Multiple times. Very hard. Very fast. 

“ _Ow_ ,” Harry wheezed. “Okay, okay. Not doing that again.”

His skin felt raw, sensitive to the touch, like someone had taken a rug and dragged it roughly all over his body. The robe brushing up against his skin had him hissing in pain, the cool stone floor a balm to the sensitive, irritated heat built up in his skin. “Ow,” Harry breathed out faintly, because it deserved repeating. 

After a few moments, Harry slowly uncurled and opened his eyes, carefully pulling the sleeves of the robe up to check the state of his arms. They looked normal - not the slightest hint of an injury - yet when Harry ran a hand over his arm gently, he cringed with pain. 

_Well,_ Harry thought, feeling a great deal more miserable. _Guess I found out what the bracelet does_.

It prevented him from using magic. 

Clearly, he had underestimated his captors. Harry hadn’t even thought… who had heard of _sealing magic_ before? Certainly not Harry, though clearly it was achievable. 

Harry’s breath stuttered as panic washed over him. A hopeless sort of anxiety and terror, the fear and disbelief that they had _taken his magic away from him—_

Harry yanked at the bracelet, ignoring the sharp flashes of pain in his hand and arm as - failing to pull it off once more, Harry resorted to clawing at the edge of the bracelet, determined to find a way to pry it off. A few minutes of agitatedly scrabbling at the bracelet resulted in nothing - it was still stuck on his wrist, and Harry still couldn’t use his magic. 

He rubbed at his face, and used the small, residual aches of pain to ground himself as he took in deep, steadying breaths, attempting to find any measure of his previous calm. 

_How do I get myself into these things?_

Harry sighed, then let his hands drop into his lap. His eyes fell on the sleeping man in the corner of the room. He hadn’t stirred once throughout all this, still slumbering away peacefully. Harry almost envied him. 

He rose to his feet, wincing all the while, and stepped over to the sleeping man, crouching an arms length away and placing a hand on his shoulder, shaking him roughly. 

“Hey. Wake up.”

No reaction. 

“Wake up,” Harry said, louder. His shaking increased. “Hey—”

The other man twitched awake violently, head jolting up as his arms swung around wildly, slapping Harry’s hand away. Harry shuffled backwards hastily, barely avoiding being hit again, and almost falling on his ass in the process. 

It took a few seconds for the man to calm down and realize that Harry wasn’t doing anything other than sitting and staring, but he eventually stilled and brought his arms down to his side, eyes darting around carefully, before finally landing on Harry. 

His face was blurry, his expression hard to discern, but after a beat of silence, the man spoke. 

“You’re awake.”His voice was croaky and hoarse, slurred with exhaustion. Harry took note of his American accent. A foreigner, then?

“Yeah,” Harry said, leaning forward incrementally so he could see the man’s face better, could examine it carefully. If Harry had to guess his age, he would place him around Harry’s own physical age - young, then. Twenties, perhaps, or maybe younger - eighteen, at the very least. “Who are you?”

The man was quiet for a few seconds, and then, slowly, he rasped out, “I’m Skull.”

Harry couldn’t help it - he squinted at Skull doubtfully. “...Really?”

“...Yes.” A pause, then, with a faint thread of annoyance woven in his voice, “Who’re you?”

Harry hesitated for a second, then said, “Harry.”

Skull squinted at Harry. “ _Hairy_? That’s…” The corners of his lips twitched upwards. “You have no right in thinking that my name sounds ridiculous.” 

With momentous effort, Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “H-A-R-R-Y,” he spelled out. “Not… that.”

“Still…” Skull mumbled, letting his head thump back against the wall. “ _Harry_.” He let out a faint huff of laughter that Harry chose to ignore. 

“What’s going on?” Harry asked instead, jumping to the point, his fingers beating an impatient beat on his thighs. “Where are we? Do you know who brought us here? _Why_?”

A pause, long enough that Harry frowned and leaned a bit closer to discern Skull’s expression. He looked… confused? Tired, perhaps. Maybe a bit dazed. 

“What…?”

Harry opened his mouth to repeat himself, but barely got out the first syllable before Skull made a sound of dawning clarity and went, “ _Oh_. This is… a cell. I’ve been… I’ve been…” Skull trailed off, his face twisting uncertainly. Harry waited a few moments for Skull to continue, then paused himself when he realized that Skull had checked out of the conversation, blinking down at his hands with tired eyes, his eyebrows knitted together in that confused expression, like he was trying to work out something that was just barely beyond his grasp, face still twisted in that look of dazed uncertainty. Harry’s gaze darted down to Skull’s hands as well, and his eyes narrowed in on the gleam of metal on his right wrist. So Skull had a bracelet as well.

“...Yes?” Harry prompted gently, after the silence had dragged on for a bit too long. Skull started slightly, as though he had forgotten Harry was crouched across from him, and looked up, face smoothing out slightly. 

“I… what?” Skull asked. “Were you… talking?”

“...No,” Harry said, biting back a sigh. “Not really.” He could feel his heart sinking down to his stomach. Skull seemed… addled. Out of sorts. Even if he _could_ get anything out of him, would he be able to trust the information? 

In the end, though, it came down to this: Harry didn’t have anything to lose by trying. 

He tilted his head, watching Skull as he tried to figure out his best approach. “Skull,” he said, after perhaps a minute or two had gone by. He gentled his voice, tried to make it as soothing as he could manage. “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

Skull’s eyes wandered away from Harry’s face, towards the window. “A couple weeks,” he said, and then fell silent once more, a small frown creeping over his face. 

“D’you know where we are?”

“...No,” Skull murmured. 

“That’s okay,” Harry said, despite the sharp tug of unhappiness in his chest. “Do you know who took you? Or why?”

Skull shrugged, listless, drawing back in on himself. His energy seemed to be drained from these scant few minutes of conversation - his eyes drooping sleepily, his shoulder slumping, his head nodding slightly. 

Harry hesitated, then reached out to gently nudge Skull’s shoulder - perhaps if he suggested moving around for a bit, it would wake Skull up - from what Harry could discern, moving around certainly couldn’t _hurt_. How long had Skull been curled up in this corner? How long had Skull been in this _room_? 

Harry’s fingers brushed against Skull’s shoulder, and the world went dark.

* * *

He awoke, staring fuzzily up at the ceiling. His first thought was, _did Skull actually knock me out?_ And then, arriving quickly after, his second thought was, _I’m so sick of waking up in weird rooms_. 

This room was dark, cloaked in shadows that swayed and flickered against a strange, sickly purple light. Harry sat up slowly, and looked around. From what he could make out as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he appeared to be sitting on a large, circular stone altar of sorts. There were grooves in the stone that his hands could feel, and he traced them slowly, frowning. The room was lit with small pinpricks of flickering purple lights that had been set around the room. They didn’t do much for illumination, and Harry let out a curse as he staggered to his feet, bemoaning his terrible eyesight. 

There looked to be a figure lying crumpled on the floor, close to a wall, close enough to a purple light that Harry could make out the general shape, but the room was too dark - and Harry’s eyesight too poor - to discern who they were - or if it was indeed a person and not just a lump of clothes, or a pile of blankets, or… 

Well, it _could_ be a person, but that didn’t exactly solve Harry’s dilemma here. 

Dread and nerves squirmed unpleasantly in his stomach. He stepped forward - one step, then two - until he reached the edge of the altar. Another step - Harry’s foot bounced off an invisible wall. Cursing under his breath, Harry raised a hand and hesitantly waved it in front of him, frowning when it hit that same wall and was repelled. 

“I really thought this would be harder,” a woman’s voice mused, breaking through the icy silence, and Harry spared a second to think, in an exhausted sort of way, _oh, what **now** , _before he spun around, arms raised defensively. He might not be able to do much without his magic, but he could still punch and kick and bite and generally make a nuisance out of himself. He had been assured, many times before, on many different occasions, that if there was anything he was good at, it was being a nuisance to those around him. Considering it was coming from Malfoy, though, it was almost a compliment. 

Harry squinted. It took him a few moments, but he finally spotted a figure standing in one of the dark corners, leaning against the wall, the color of her robes blending in perfectly with the shadows around her. 

“I planned for it to be harder,” she continued, evidently not needing Harry to be part of this conversation. “...but, I guess I shouldn’t complain about things being _easier_ than I thought they would be.” A short, humorless laugh. 

“Who are you?” Harry’s voice was sharp, cold. 

The woman stepped closer, beginning to loosely circle the altar. Harry turned with her. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

Another laugh, this time a little looser, full of genuine humor. “Should’ve figured you’d have questions.” There was a rueful edge to her voice. 

“Guess you have terrible foresight,” Harry snapped. “Are you going to answer me?”

She stopped, and looked at him consideringly, tilting her head. Her hair was shiny and dark, cut into a neat bob. Small strands of her hair fell into her face at the gesture, framing it delicately. The purple light played across her features, giving her face an unhealthily pale, sickly look. Her expression was indiscernible. 

“...Harry Potter,” she said, softly, slowly, drawing the name out with careful consideration. Harry stifferened. “You look good for your age. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you don’t look a day past twenty.” 

There was a cold chill running down Harry’s spine. The wriggling nerves in his stomach began to writhe about with renewed urgency. He was silent for a long, long moment, and then, finally, his mouth dry, his mind racing a hundred miles a second, “I’m flattered, really,” he said, careful to keep his voice even, “but if you wanted my skincare routine, all you needed to do was ask.”

A snort. “Yeah, right. Skincare routine. Does anyone actually buy that?”

Harry shrugged. “Never doubt the power of a good moisturizer,” he said. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Didn’t I?” There was a challenge in her tone, her eyes glittering under the lights as she continued her circling. 

Harry let out a breath, and kept her in his line of sight, even as he considered and dropped questions and conversation leads, cycling through them in his head rapidly. If he kept her talking long enough, maybe he’d buy himself enough time to… well. Figure out a different plan. 

“So. All of this was you?”

“I can’t take credit for all of it,” she said, rather modestly. “Although… _this_ -” and she swept an arm out, gesturing to the room at large, “-this last part is entirely my doing.”

Harry’s eyes caught on the same figure lying on the floor as they circled, and paused consideringly. “Who is that, then?” He asked, jerking his head toward the figure. “One of your friends?”

A laugh. “No.” She paused for a moment, then said, “You’ve met him, actually. Shared his cell for a short while.” A longer pause, while Harry digested that. “He was one of the more bothersome to deal with, at first,” she mused. “The strongest we could get our hands on, though. That made him worth the trouble.”

Harry felt a shudder of disgust run through him at the cold, detached way she spoke of Skull - like he wasn’t human, but rather a particularly interesting specimen of some sort. And the others she mentioned… 

“What are you talking about?” Harry demanded. “You have—how many others do you have? _Why_?”

“His kind are interesting,” she said. “And we - _I_ \- needed one to make this possible.”

She let out a breath, and then checked her wrist, likely looking at a watch. “...Time to wrap this up.”

She reached into the pocket of her robes and pulled from within a vial of dark liquid, stepping closer as she uncorked it, close enough that, were it not for the additional height Harry gained from standing on the altar, they would be face to face. She tilted her face up to stare at him for a moment, looking almost painfully young, her glittering eyes holding an emotion Harry couldn’t decipher. 

“...You don’t need to do this,” Harry said, voice far calmer than he felt. “Whatever it is, whatever you’re going to do, you can stop.” 

They locked eyes. “No,” she said. “I can’t.” A breath, and then, under her breath, so soft that Harry barely heard it, “I _won’t_.”

She lifted her arm and - carefully, delicately - began to spill the liquid along the edge of the stone, just beyond Harry’s reach, starting her careful circuit of the altar again. The air was tinged with a dry, metallic tint - Harry’s lips thinned. 

Blood. 

Harry had enough first-hand experience with what blood could be used for in magical rituals. He didn’t want anymore, thank you very much. Harry pushed against the invisible barrier, still finding not give, as she finished her circle and corked the vial, tucking it away once more and pulling out a thin knife. Taking a steadying breath, barely flinching, she drew the knife down her palm and let the blood drip onto the stone, still circling. She was murmuring something, though the words were too faint for Harry to catch - though whether that was because she was speaking too quickly, too softly, or because of the buzzing that had developed in Harry’s ears, he wasn’t sure. 

The world swayed - or, rather, Harry realized, a second, two seconds later, not the _world_. _Harry_ was the one swaying, then stumbling, then falling to his knees with a pained gasp, black spots engulfing his vision. It felt, almost, as though someone was reaching through his chest and slowly wrapping their hand around his heart, tugging - at first gently, then _forcefully_ \- in an attempt to tear it free of his chest, inch by painful inch. Harry blinked at the ceiling, dazedly wondering when he had fallen over. He blinked again, and shifted his head to the side to stare at the woman. Her mouth was moving, but Harry couldn’t hear it through the buzzing in his ears, the static in his head. He noted, faintly, that the sickly purple lights were flaring brighter and brighter, casting the details of the room in sharp relief. 

Harry let his head roll to the side, and he blinked, the world swimming before his eyes. He could feel his breaths, wheezing in his chest, quick quick quick, like the thumping of his heart, and he struggled to focus, to draw in a deeper breath as he blinked rapidly. His vision cleared for a moment, the black dots receding, and Harry realized that the woman had stopped circling, pressing her hand fully to the stone, a look of concentration etched into her face. His chest felt heavy, the weight around his heart squeezing tighter - than releasing all at once, as if it had grown disinterested, and, instead, crept slowly up his throat, through his head, poking around his brain, swirling its fingers around curiously, slowly peeling back everything that made him _Harry_. 

It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. This was what it must feel like, to have your mind torn apart. Everything when fuzzy and dark, and Harry just _hurt_ , he hurt, he—

The world came back into focus, and Harry blinked, his eyes feeling heavy and sore, his throat aching - but the woman was gone, she was gone, where did she go—

But the _pain_. It _ached_. 

_Everything_ \- his whole body felt scraped raw, and it—he—

_Get a hold of yourself, Potter_ , Harry thought grimly. He blinked again, thinking longingly of a nice cup of soothingly cool water. 

He shifted his head to look around (the only part of his body he felt he could move somewhat reliably) to try and find the woman - and he spotted two figures wrestling on the ground, the purple lights - still flared out and bright, though no less sickly - illuminating their struggles. 

Things went fuzzy and dark for a little bit, the world fading out for a moment, and Harry blinked back into it just in time to see one of the figures staggering up - Skull, Harry thought, catching sight of the unkempt purple hair - clutching the left side of his face as he stumbled away and fell against the altar. There was blood dripping down his face, coating his palm, slipping down to stain the collar of his grey robes. His hand slipped away from his face, and he gripped the altar, trying to lever himself up to a standing position. 

Harry’s vision whited out, pain rushing through him. 

He couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, could barely _think_ \- all he could feel was the waves of pain crashing down on him, rushing through him, relentless in their intensity and frequency. It was agony far worse than anything Harry had ever endured, anything he had been subjected to, physical or mental. The fingers were back, but instead of the curious, slow creep from before, they were vicious, rough, panicked. They ripped, and tore, and _pulled_ , and he was coming apart, he was being pulled apart—

His very being, his sense of self, all of it was being wrenched away from him, desperate to leave him an empty, hollow shell. 

Harry fought it. Fought to keep himself together, fought to keep hold of all his tattered and ruined pieces. He yanked, and he pulled, and he grasped on with every bit of willpower he could summon. 

_I am Harry Potter,_ he thought, and thought, and thought. He held onto that mantra like a drowning man, clutching desperately for anything to keep himself afloat. 

There were new, jagged edges in him. 

_I am Harry Potter._

Everything was twisting. Harry struggled for clarity, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t think, there wasn’t any time—he just had to keep himself afloat, had to keep from being swept away—

He was being pulled apart, he was being stitched together—

_I am—_

_—the great, the immortal—_

_—Harry Potter._

Everything quivered to a stop, so suddenly, so quickly, that Harry winced at the subsequent whiplash. His head ached, his throat burned, his body felt like one long, limp noodle. The left side of his face stung and burned unpleasantly, and there was a dull throb in his chest. Something deep inside him felt jagged and broken, _wrong wrong wrong_ and it _hurt_ —

His mouth was full of blood. 

Harry spat it out and shakily pushed himself to his knees. He opened his eyes and blinked as the world swayed and blurred before him - but already, strangely enough, the room was sharpening in detail, clarity coming where once before there had only been blurred confusion. It was strange how crisp everything seemed, despite the darkness, despite the lack of aid from the purple lights, which seemed to have been extinguished sometime while Harry was unconscious. 

_How long was I out?_ He closed his eyes and drew in a steadying breath. Calm thoughts, calm thoughts, don’t panic. 

He gave himself a moment, then stumbled to his feet and staggered painfully, slowly, over to a wall, where he groped his way around the room, leaning heavily against the wall for support as his fingers sought along it, hoping beyond hope—

_Yes_. Harry let out a relieved, shaky exhale when his fingers found a light switch, and flipped it. An overhead light flickered on, cold and blue and fluorescent. 

Harry froze, fingers still on the light switch, breath caught in his throat, stomach flopping with anxiety. This hand - pale, slender, scarred, but not in the right ways, not in the right places - this wasn’t… this wasn’t his hand. This was… 

Harry looked up, turning slowly, leaning heavily against the wall. He breathed in, breathed out, willing the world to stop spinning, just for one moment. There was the woman, lying face-up on the floor, robes spread out around her, eyes wide and unseeing as she stared up at the ceiling. Then, past her, the stone altar.

And on it, shakily levering itself to its knees, was Harry’s body. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY so like. WHO let sleep-deprived, three am me with one brain cell post the first chapter of this story holy shit. (...it was me. _I_ let me do that. unbelievable.) wow. I barely remember typing up all those tags lmao
> 
> so the tags are now edited (ish) and organized! (....somewhat) & if you're looking at the summary and wondering if I changed it - yeah, I did. mostly because i'm an indecisive bastard, lmao. it might change again in the future! also, i would reccommend checking the tags w/each chapter update: i might add stuff to them, and i don't want y'all to be caught off guard by something that could squick/trigger you. take care of yourselves! (also if you need me to tag anything, just let me know!) 
> 
> enjoy the chapter!

There were moments in Harry’s life where he wondered where he’d gone wrong. At some point, quite a few years ago, he’d even sat down to try and map it out - eventually, after hours of contemplation and scribbling, he’d gotten frustrated and chucked the lot of it, deciding, rather resolutely, that at the end of the day, Voldemort could be blamed for most of the problems in Harry’s life, one way or the other. 

Harry watched his trembling body as it pushed itself to its knees and stared around the room dazedly, and thought, _damn you to hell, Tom Riddle_. 

It was cathartic, even if it didn’t fix anything about the situation. Harry stared for a second longer, then tore his eyes away and glanced around the room, momentarily reveling in his improved eyesight. 

The woman was still on the floor, eyes gazing sightlessly up at the ceiling, face slack and unmoving, a small trail of dried blood leaking out her nose, running down her cheek. 

Dead. She was dead. 

Harry swallowed and then looked away. Heavy curtains were hung and drawn on the wall to Harry’s right, and then, on the very same wall Harry was leaning against, not far at all—

A door. 

A shout echoed through the room as the body on the altar caught sight of Harry and shuffled backwards, nearly falling off the edge in its haste to back away. 

“W-what?!” It said, voice rough, hoarse and raspy. “Who… when—”

Harry blinked in surprise, then felt some measure of relief rush through him. That accent was entirely American - not British, like Harry or the woman. It was a minor consolation, after everything that happened, that it was not the woman currently inhabiting his form - but a consolation nonetheless. 

“Skull?” Harry said, hoarsely, momentarily taken aback at the sound of his voice - a little higher pitched, a little softer, a lot more unfamiliar. “It’s alright. It’s Harry.”

“ _What the fuck,_ ” Skull said, apparently not comforted at all. He scrambled off the altar and swayed on his feet, squinting around the room with a look of alarm clear on his face. “...What’s wrong with my eyes?!”

“Er,” Harry said. “I have pretty terrible eyesight.”

“... _You_ have…” Skull trailed off, and rubbed at his forehead, looking entirely overwhelmed. “I think… I think I need to sit down,” he said, faintly. 

Harry pushed himself off the wall and stumbled towards Skull, who looked far too alarmed when he realized Harry was approaching him. Yeah, Harry was planning to finish Skull off, hobbling and magicless as he was. Shoving that uncharitable thought to the back of his mind, Harry held up his hands to show he didn’t intend any harm, and kept staggering forward. 

“I’m Harry,” he said again. “You remember me, right?”

Skull reached out blindingly for the edge of that altar, then shifted to lean against it wearily. “...Yeah,” he said, eventually, sounding a little uncertain. “The… the guy with the funny name.”

Harry twitched. “Sure,” he said, figuring this probably wasn’t the best time to quibble over who amongst them had the funnier sounding name. 

Skull narrowed his eyes at him and said, “Why do you… look like me?” His gaze flickered down to his own body - well, _Harry’s_ body, technically - and he grimaced, raising a hand to rub at his eyes. “Why don’t I look…” he trailed off. There was a fearful quaver in his voice, his face full of poorly masked apprehension. “I,” he started again. “I don’t… is this real?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Yeah, this is real.” _Unfortunately_. “And, well.” He hesitated. “I think… whatever she was trying to do, whatever she planned-” Harry inclined his head towards the woman on the ground, “-went wrong. I don’t know exactly what, but I don’t think… well, I don’t think this was supposed to be the end result, exactly. Something went wrong, and, well…” Harry gestured between them. Then, seeing Skull’s eyes widen, a flash of genuine, horrified terror and despair washing across his face, Harry hurried to add, “But I know some people who could fix this. Whatever went wrong.”

Skull’s shoulders slumped with relief. “It’s not permanent?” He rasped. “It’s fixable?”

“Er,” Harry said. “...Yes.”

 _Hopefully_ , he tacked on mentally, but didn’t dare say aloud - Skull looked as though one wrong word would crush him completely. 

“Okay,” Skull mumbled to himself, the word so quiet it could be mistaken for a puff of air. “Okay.” He took a deep breath and then glanced beyond Harry, at where the woman lay. His jaw clenched. “...She did this?” 

It seemed to be a purely rhetorical question, because Harry had scarcely opened his mouth to reply (something along the lines of _er, yes?_ ) Before Skull pushed himself away from the altar, hobbling past Harry, lurching towards the woman. Harry snapped his mouth shut and turned to watch him go, eyebrows knitting together in concern. 

Skull stumbled to a stop by the side of her corpse, and he stared down at her for a long moment, body eerily still, tight with tension. A second passed, then another, and then when Harry thought that maybe this was all Skull wanted to do, that maybe he just wanted to see her face, to confirm for himself that she was really dead—Skull pulled his leg back and kicked her in the side, hard. Then he did it again, and again, and again - Harry started towards him, alarmed, but with one last, violent kick, Skull’s legs buckled beneath him and he fell backwards onto his ass with a _thud_ and a small grunt of pain. He didn’t seem overly inclined to stand again, so after some silent hovering, Harry dropped down gracelessly to kneel next to him. 

“She’s dead,” Harry said, quietly - not as a condemnation of Skull’s actions (any part of him that felt sympathy towards the woman only needed to look down at his hands - sorry, not _his_ hands, actually, that was the _problem_ \- to be firmly squashed), but intended as a clumsy attempt at comfort. 

“I know,” Skull said, just as quietly. “But she… she deserved that. Would’ve given her more if she was still alive.” There was a bitter, angry bite to his words. 

“...Did you know her?” 

“I don’t even know her name.” Skull drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “But she was horrible. I’m glad she’s dead.”

Harry didn’t quite know what to say. He settled for raising a hand and awkwardly patting Skull on the shoulder. 

They were quiet for a moment, as Harry took his hand back and leaned over to brush the woman’s eyelids closed. Somehow, without her glassy stare, her glazed over, dark blue eyes - Harry felt more at ease. He settled back, and they both fell into a tired, dazed sort of silence, until a knock on the door resounded through the room. 

He and Skull shared a mutual look of panic. 

“Hey,” a male voice called through the door. Skull scrambled for the knife still clutched in the woman’s hand and pried it out. “I just got back. Food’s in the kitchen. Is everything okay in there? You said you’d be done by now.”

“Why do you get the knife?” Harry hissed, pushing himself to his feet. 

“Do you know how to use it?” Skull hissed back. 

“Do _you_?”

“ _Yes_ , that’s why I—”

Another knock, and the male voice said, “Hey, are you okay? I know you said I shouldn’t come in, but if you don’t answer…” 

Harry abandoned their argument and darted over to the side of the door, ignoring how his body ached and protested at the sudden movement. Skull, just a few seconds behind, copied him and pressed his body up against the wall on the other side of the door, knife gripped firmly in hand. 

Their eyes met. 

Harry mouthed, _don’t let him go for his wand._

Skull’s face twisted in confusion. 

Oh, right. Harry had forgotten - his eyesight. 

The doorknob jiggled and turned, the door swinging open. A man stepped in, looking around the same age as the woman - mid to late twenties, with neatly combed auburn hair and a clean-shaven face, dressed in casual Muggle clothing. He froze a step into the room, likely catching sight of the woman’s body. 

“ _Merlin_ ,” he breathed, alarm clear in his voice. “What—”

Harry jumped him. 

He wrapped his legs around the man’s sides, trapping one of his arms and squeezing as tight as possible as he locked an arm around the man’s neck, and the other threaded under his armpit, clutching onto Harry’s elbow, pulling the arm around his neck tighter, tighter, _tighter_. 

The man wheezed in surprise and stumbled backwards, reaching up to claw uselessly at the arm around his neck, then reaching back to dig at Harry’s face - Harry ducked his head down and found something squishy to bite down hard on. Skin broke under his teeth, and Harry could taste blood in his mouth. The man gave a shout of pain and stumbled backwards, slamming Harry into the doorframe. 

Harry let out a sharp gasp - and the man’s fist slammed into Harry’s face. 

It was a clumsy blow, borne more from desperation than any real calculation, but it reignited the burning pain in Harry’s face, and Harry let out a yelp, his grip loosening reflexively. The man slammed him against the doorway one last time and broke free, coughing, as Harry slid to the floor, trying to blink away the black spots in his vision. 

The man’s arm reached down to his jeans, fumbling for the wand jutting out of his waistband. Harry was stumbling upright, his head pounding, his left eye squeezed shut against the new flow of blood, his right watering with pain as he tried to force himself upwards, to lurch towards the man—

Skull tackled the man, sending the both of them flying. The man lost his grip on his wand and it went clattering across the floor as he slammed into the ground face first, Skull straddling his back. They wrestled for a few seconds, before Skull managed to get a grip on his hair, slamming the man’s head into the ground - one, two, three, four times - until he fell limp, unconscious. 

Skull stared down at him for a moment, breathing hard, then let go of his hair and let out a pained groan, rolling off the man’s body and slumping bonelessly to the floor. “Ow,” he croaked. “Something’s seriously wrong with your body. Everything hurts.”

Harry could empathize with the feeling. 

He limped over and offered Skull a hand up - after a few seconds, Skull accepted it, and Harry helped heave him to his feet. 

“You didn’t even use the knife,” Harry said indignantly, pressing a hand to his face gingerly and wincing. His face felt… very wet. Wet and sticky and bruised and sore - all things that Harry, with his limited medical expertise, felt confident in deeming, ‘probably not good’. Harry pulled his hand away and grimaced at the blood, wiping if off on his robe. 

“I look like a _mess_ ,” Skull said, leaning forward - and down, Harry noted with some degree of irritation, having assumed his days of being short were far behind him - to peer at his face, expression simultaneously fascinated and horrified. 

“You _feel_ like a mess,” Harry grumbled. “Don’t try to avoid the knife thing.”

“Ah.” Skull blinked down at the hand that still gripped the knife, face faintly surprised, as though he had forgotten he was holding it. He shrugged. “I… I guess I didn’t need to use it.”

“Hm,” Harry said, decidedly unimpressed. 

Skull shrugged, as if to say, _what can you do_ , and then glanced back at the doorway. “...You think there’s more of them?”

Harry turned to look, then tilted his head and listened for a moment. He couldn’t hear anything - beyond their harsh breathing, and the slow puffs of air from the unconscious man, it was completely silent. 

“...I think they would have come running already,” he said. They had made quite a racket, after all. Still, one could never be too sure - Harry jerked his head towards the man and said, “Let’s tie him up, and then check.”

“Sure,” Skull said. Then, “Um. With what?”

 _Incarcerous_ was on the tip of Harry’s tongue, but he paused, remembering the bracelets. He glanced around the room, then motioned to the curtains to his right and said, “Go on. Put your knife skills to use.”

Skull narrowed his eyes at the teasing tone, but did limp over and, after some consideration, yank at one of the curtains, bringing it crashing down, revealing a window. The light from the room bounced off the glass surface, and Harry could see a vague, wavy reflection of the room from where he squinted at it, but not much else. Skull leaned closer to peer out of it curiously, then he shook his head - muttering something under his breath - and crouched, beginning to tear the curtain into strips. 

Harry turned away, and hobbled towards where the man’s wand had rolled to a stop. He bent down to pick it up - wincing all the while - and rolled it around in his hand contemplatively before sticking it his his pocket. 

Once Skull had limped back, cloth strips of varying width and length clutched in his hands, they bound the man and leaned him up against the altar. Skull seemed to take a particular sort of enjoyment in stuffing a balled up bunch of fabric in the man’s mouth. 

Harry paused, eyed the man - who stayed firmly unconscious during this whole process, leading Harry to wonder _just_ how hard Skull had hit his head - and said, “...We’re probably going to have to take that our eventually.” 

Skull shrugged. “Eventually,” he said, and then tied a gag around the man’s mouth. 

Harry studied him for a moment longer, then decided to drop it. He turned back to the door and limped over. If no one had interrupted them during all this, Harry had a hard time imagining there was anyone else here - but it was still a good idea to poke around, get a sense for where they were. He stuck his head out and looked around. 

The door led to a small, open area, empty of anyone or anything - windows were set against the wall to Harry’s left, and there was an open door across from him, revealing a small bathroom. The lights in this small, empty area were on, brightening the room with that same cold fluorescent light. He blinked, then stepped out further. To his right, an open kitchen - also empty of anyone, though Harry did take note of the bags of take-out on the counter - and, past that, a small entry hall, leading to the front door. 

If Harry had to guess, he would say they were in an apartment of sorts - a fairly small (if one discounted the room behind Harry, which, now that he thought about it, must have been treated with some sort of Extension Charm) and a dusty, unused one at that. 

Harry glanced around the area one last time, hobbled over to check that the front door was locked - taking a quick peek out the peephole and seeking nothing but an empty carpeted hallway - and then went back to the room. 

“There’s no one here,” he said. Then, “...What are you doing?”

Skull didn’t glance up from where he was rifling through the woman’s pockets. “Checking to see if she has anything useful,” he said, as though it should be obvious. “All _he_ had-” he jerked his head towards the man, “-was some gum.” 

“...Right,” Harry said, slowly. “Well, like I said, there’s no one else here.” He paused, then added, “For now.”

Skull pulled a notebook from her pocket and examined it curiously for a moment, before shoving it into his robe. He looked up at Harry and sat back, rubbing at his face. 

“Right,” he said. “Okay.” He jerked his head at the man. “What should we do with him?”

“Well,” Harry said, after a small pause. “Two options.” 

“Hm?” Skull was fiddling with a watch around his wrist, squinting at the clock face. Harry glanced between him and the woman lying on the floor, and decided not to ask. 

“We could leave, right now,” Harry said. “And leave him here, like this. Or…”

“ _Or…_?” Skull echoed, eyes flicking up to Harry cautiously. 

“We wake him up and get some answers,” Harry said. 

A smile curled around Skull’s lips. “Option two,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. 

Both of them hovered over the unconscious man. Harry’s hand twitched, his mouth opening to shape the word _rennervate_ —and he snapped it shut at the last second with a _clack_. Instead, Harry watched silently as Skull - looking a little too pleased at the opportunity - leaned over and slapped the man in the face a few times, none too gently. 

The man let out a muffled, pained groan, his eyes fluttering open slowly - then widening as they finally focused on Harry and Skull, inarticulate noises pouring out of his mouth. 

Harry reached forward, hand inches from the man’s face. “Don’t try anything,” Harry warned. “My friend here has a knife, and he knows how to use it. Understand?” 

A small pause, and the man inclined his head slightly. Harry closed the distance and tugged the gag down, then snatched the cloth out of his mouth, tossing it to the floor. Behind Harry, Skull let out a small sound of disappointment. 

“Great,” Harry said. “You can talk. Start by explaining who you are and _what_ -” Harry gestured around them, “-exactly is going on here.”

The man’s eyes darted around the room, his pupils wide and unfocused, before finally - somewhat reluctantly - settling back on them. “Name,” Harry repeated, patience thinning. 

After a long moment, the man finally slurred out, “Harper.”

“Harper,” Harry echoed. “Care to explain all this?”

Harper struggled to straighten up, expression mutinous. “You killed Evelyn,” he said, sounding a painful mix of angry and anguished. Harry swallowed, trying to ignore the threads of guilt that rose up reflexively in the face of Harper’s apparent grief. 

“If you don’t want to join her,” Skull said, crouching and motioning towards Harper’s face with the knife threateningly. “You’ll answer our questions. Where are we?”

Harper stared ar Skull for a moment, looking puzzled, then he licked his lips and said, confident, bit slightly wary, “You won’t actually hurt me. You’re Harry Potter.”

Skull flinched back, the brief surprise on his face flickering to something tight and angry - and then he drew the knife back and stabbed it into Harper’s thigh. 

Harry let out a surprised shout at the same time Harper let out a pained cry, curling in on himself, fighting uselessly against his bindings as he tried to struggle away from Skull.

“ _Merlin_ ,” Harry said, instinctively, voice loud as he lurched forward to grip Skull’s shoulder tightly, eyes on Harper as he twitched and shuddered through the pain, eyes squeezed shut. “Skull, what the _hell_ —”

“Answer the question,” Skull said, ignoring the death grip Harry had on his shoulder and tugging the knife out and watching with dispassionate eyes as the blood soaked through the material of Harper’s jeans - a dark, grim stain that grew by the second. “ _Where are we?_ ”

Harper let his head fall back, resting it against the altar for a moment, unable to repress a pained whimper. “Valencia,” he managed to force out. “An… an apartment we got to lay low in.”

“Lay low,” Harry echoed, fingers digging into Skull’s shoulder, no doubt in a way that would leave bruises. “Why?”

“We…” Harper paused, hissing out a pained breath through his teeth, jaw clenched. “We weren’t supposed to take the both of you.” He grimaced. “Or—or either of you, really.”

“Take us? From where? Who?”

Harper’s gaze darted over to Evelyn’s body, and he licked his lips, and met Harry’s eyes. “The organization,” he said, and his lips twitched upwards slightly. 

Harry blinked at him frowning. It was vague, sure, and probably purposefully so - but something about it felt familiar. _The organization_. Where had he… 

“Does anyone else know about this place?” Skull asked, shaking Harry out of his thoughts.

Harper hesitated once more, and Skull prodded him roughly in the chest with a finger. “Answer the question.”

Harper stared at Skull with narrowed eyes, then said, “Nobody. Nobody else knows. We were careful.”

“Okay,” Skull said, slowly. “Okay.” He hesitated for a moment, then asked. “What’s the date?”

“What?” Harper said, blinking at Skull, looking befuddled.

“The _date_. It’s not a trick question. What is it?”

“Oh.” Harper glanced at Harry, strangely enough, then said, “October thirty-first.”

...Of course it was. Harry resisted the urge to throw his hands in the air in exasperation, and frowned to himself. Last he remembered, it had been the twenty-eighth - he had been missing for three days, and yet he could only account for perhaps a few scant hours. That was… concerning. 

He turned that over in his head contemplatively, and glanced at Skull - then froze, momentarily taken aback. All the color had drained from Skull’s face, and his eyes were wide in startlement and shock. He had drawn back slightly, as if to put distance between himself and Harper, his grip on the knife loosening. 

“You’re lying,” Skull said, blankly. “You… it can’t be.” He shook Harry’s grip off his shoulder and rose to his feet shakily, beginning to pace, running his free hand through his hair. 

Free from the threat of the knife, Harper straightened slightly, teeth gritted against the pain as he jostled his leg, watching Skull pace around with a small frown, before his gaze flickered to Evelyn, his expression crumpling into a pained grief that felt uncomfortable to witness, as though Harry was intruding on something intimate. Something private. 

Harry let a breath out and turned towards Skull. “Skull,” he said, and took a step towards him, but Skull had already whirled back on Harper, and his voice went unnoticed. 

“It can’t be October.” Skull said. “You only—you only had me for a few weeks. Two months, at most. _It’s not October_.”

“Skull,” Harry said, again, and this time Skull turned, staring at Harry with wild eyes. “He’s not lying. It was October twenty-eighth, last I checked. Before I was taken.”

Harper’s gaze lifted from Evelyn’s body, and it rapidly flickered between the two of them, a look of comprehension dawning on his face. “They didn’t have you dor weeks,” he said. “They only had you for a couple days, since the twenty-eight…” he peered at Skull, then glanced down at Evelyn. “You’re not Harry Potter, are you? Something went wrong with the ritual.”

Harry narrowed his eyes at him. “ _Ritual_?”

Harper set his jaw and glared up at him. “You killed Evelyn. I’m not telling you anything else.”

“It’s October,” Skull repeated, blankly, staring at the wall opposite him aimlessly. “Why can’t I…” he trailed off, and then swallowed, his body trembling like a line strained to its breaking point, his hand flexing around the handle of his knife as he redirected his gaze to Harper, looking incredibly lost. “What did you do to me?”

Harper let out a long breath, his eyes looking beyond Skull, towards Evelyn, the silence stretching, going taut with tension. Skull took a step forward, and the motion made Harper’s eyes snap back towards him. There was a calmness to him that hadn’t been there before - a settled feeling, like he had finally made peace with something. His eyes glittered with something calculating, something unmistakably _malicious_ in nature. Harry frowned, and took a step closer to Skull instinctively, alarm bells beginning to sound off in his head.

Harper licked his lips. “We had to sedate you, at some points,” he said, speaking with the utmost care. “You, well. You were a little too troublesome, otherwise. Other times…” he hesitated for a moment. “Other times, things… they went wrong. Your memory had to be… tweaked, or you had to be put back under…” he trailed off, tilting his head back to meet Skull’s eyes squarely. “You kept attacking us. Trying to escape, too. It just made more sense to keep you pliable.”

“Pliable,” Skull repeated, his body shaking, jaw clenching. 

Harper inclined his head, as if to say, _well, yes_. 

Skull crouched down next to him, eyes searching Harper’s face. “ _Why_.”

“Skull—” Harry said, heart jack-rabbiting in his chest as he reached out to grab Skull’s shoulder, the familiar feeling of _something is going wrong, something is going wrong_ , rushing through him, urging him to say something, do something - but Skull held up a hand to halt him, and the rest of Harry’s protest dried up in his throat. 

“You’re one of the strongest seven,” Harper murmured, so quietly Harry’s ears had to strain to catch his words. Skull flinched away from Harper, eyes wide. “After we learned about you… how could we resist? We had done our research, of course - you were the easiest to grab, we figured. The others were harder to track, harder to find, but you were in the public eye. You were vulnerable in ways the rest of them weren’t.” He was speaking very quickly now, the words pouring out of him in a flurry, slurring together. “How could we resist? The things we learned from you…” he trailed off, and then said, jaw set stubbornly, “I don’t regret it. I would do it again. I would do it _better_.”

“Stop talking,” Skull said, lips barely moving, voice barely audible. “Stop—”

“We’ve probably learned enough to go after the others,” Harper continued, talking over Skull, talking _louder_. “Thanks to your help, of course. And now that you’re gone, they don’t have any reason not to - and you gave us so _much_ , I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard.” The corners of Harper’s lips curled up into an unpleasant smile. “Do you think any of them would last as long as you? They look pretty tough, but so did _you_ , at first—”

He stopped talking, abruptly, and gave a strangled, wet gurgle. Both Harry and Harper stared down in muted surprise at the knife Skull had planted firmly in Harper’s throat, knuckles white around the handle. Skull, face twisted and contorted into pure _rage_ , ripped the knife sideways. Harry flinched backwards, eyes wide, as a warm mist sprayed his robes, a few splatters landing on his face. He could feel them dripping down, sliding down his face, his neck—numbly, Harry brought a hand up to wipe at his face, unable to look away. 

Skull, who had been caught in the brunt of the spray, hadn’t even twitched. Harper’s head tilted back at an unnaturally grotesque angle, his throat still making that horrible gurgling noise, his blood soaking through his clothes, beginning to drip and puddle on the floor. 

The noises faded away after a moment, and not long after, Harper’s eyes went dim and glassy. Harry noted, dimly, that his lips were still slightly upturned, and his stomach roiled around unpleasantly. He looked unpleasantly pleased, even in death. 

“What did you _do_?” The words slipped out before Harry could catch them, before he was even aware he was even aware he was speaking, still trapped in a horrified daze, unable to tear his eyes away. 

Skull blinked down at Harper’s body, and pushed himself up to stand on unsteady legs. “I used the knife,” Skull said, his voice as unsteady as his trembling legs. 

Harry blinked, then, with some effort, forcibly tore his eyes away from Harper, fixing Skull with a disbelieving look. 

“You used—” Harry cut himself off with a shake of his head, and then said, voice rising to a shout that echoed throughout the room, “We didn’t _need_ to use the knife. What we _needed_ was _answers_. We needed to know _more!_ I don’t know where you come from, but we can’t just go around killing people here—”

“ _We_ didn’t do anything,” Skull snarled back, just as loud, pushing himself into Harry’s space, using every inch of height Harry’s body had over Skull’s to loom over him. “ _I_ did.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, acidicly, glaring up at him, refusing to give an inch. “That’s the _problem_.”

Skull made an inarticulate noise of rage and whirled around, dropping the knife to the floor with a clatter as he paced around agitatedly. 

“No,” he said, _snarled._ “The _problem_ is that they had me for _six months_. Six months! They—” his voice broke, and he paced faster, visibly choking back his emotion. “They did things to me. Messed around with my body, my mind, and I can’t—I can’t even remember _half_ the things they did because, apparently, they decided to fucking _traipse_ around in my memories while they were at it. And _now_ -” Skull threw his hands in the air, gesturing between them wildly, “-now I don’t even _have_ my body anymore! They took that from me too!”

Skull stabbed a finger towards Harper. “He deserved that. He deserved _worse_.”

He paced, and paced, turning in a circle as he ran bloody hands through his hair, smearing it through the strands. “Six months,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “I thought—I thought they would have found me by then. I thought they were _looking_ , I thought—”

He cut himself off and seemed to deflate, abruptly losing steam, his shoulders slumping, his face streaked with blood and painfully lost. He pressed a hand over his eyes and stood there, trembling. “I thought—” he choked out once more, and then firmly pressed his lips together into a thin, tremulous line. 

Harry’s anger drained out of him as quickly as it had appeared - it had been a fledgling thing, borne mostly from the shock of witnessing such a violent, grisly end - and now Harry just felt very, very tired. 

Skull seemed remarkably small where he was standing, his whirlwind of emotion and yelling fading into a subdued sort of misery as he shrank into himself. Harry didn’t quite know how to handle this - this whole day, these past few hours, the last couple of minutes… it all seemed like a vaguely unpleasant dream, something that Harry would wake from at any moment. None of this seemed _real_ , and perhaps if Harry was alone, he would allow himself to sink into the feeling, into the dreamlike quality his perception had shifted into - but he wasn’t, and he couldn’t. 

Instead, he summoned up memories of what he used to do when Teddy was younger, and terribly sad - and stepped forward, reaching out a hand to rest on Skull’s shoulder. Skull stiffened, at first, but didn’t draw away, and so Harry slid his arm around Skull’s shoulder, and tugged him down into a hug. Skull was tense against him for a moment - but then he relaxed into it, burying his head in Harry’s shoulder, his breath coming out in quick rasps that built to larger, chest heaving sobs. 

Harry wrapped his arms around him tighter in response, and petted his hair slowly, wrinkling his nose slightly at the tacky, drying blood caught on the strands. He lowered them slowly to the ground - Skull clinging to him with surprising strength - and, out of habit, started to hum lightly. An old lullaby, something that Andromeda had taught him. 

It took a minute or two, but Skull eventually stilled, his breath evening out. He didn’t move away quite yet, still clinging, not ready to relinquish the contact - so Harry kept up his humming, and the slow, careful way he ran a hand through Skull’s hair, staring sightlessly over Skull’s shoulder at an utterly unremarkable corner of the room. 

“S’nice song,” Skull croaked out, eventually.

“Mm,” Harry said, noncommittal. 

“I’m not sorry,” Skull continued on, after a long pause, his hands tightening their grip on the back of Harry’s robes, his voice muffled slightly by Harry’s shoulder. “For killing him. Does that upset you?”

Harry considered the question for a moment. “I’m not upset,” he said, finally. And it was true, surprisingly - he wasn’t. He wasn’t happy about it either, granted - he would never be _happy_ with the loss of life, not when it could have been prevented, not when it was such a _waste_ \- but Harry could… he could understand this, to some degree. 

People could be cruel. Harry knew that better than most. Harper and Evelyn - whatever they had been in life, Harry figured that _cruel_ probably didn’t cover it. 

Maybe Harry would be more upset about it later, once he managed to drag himself out of this bone-deep exhaustion, but right now… he just felt drained. All the aches and pains of his body were beginning to hit him again, and his head was beginning to spark with the promise of a spectacular headache, and all Harry wanted to do was down a couple of Pain Relieving potions and then collapse on a bed and sleep for a week. 

Skull tugged himself away, wiping at his face. “I’m…” Skull hesitated for a moment, avoiding Harry’s gaze. “I’m sorry that we didn’t manage to get more out of him, though. I probably should’ve…” Skull’s mouth twisted unhappily. “...tried to calm down.”

“...It’s fine,” Harry said. It wasn’t like Harry wasn’t partially responsible, anyway. Once he had realized that Harper was planning something, he should have tried harder to stop him. Gagged him again, maybe. “I don’t think we would have gotten much else out of him, anyway. I get the feeling he riled you up on purpose. He wanted you to…” Harry swallowed, his mouth dry, and very pointedly did not look at where Harper’s corpse lay. 

Skull didn’t look happy with the information. His hands fisted into his robes, pulling roughly at the material. “I played right into his hands, then,” he said. 

“I’m sure he knew exactly what buttons to push,” Harry said, quietly. He pushed himself to his feet and offered Skull a hand up - once accepted, he heaved Skull to his feet as well. “Don’t think about it too much. We’ll figure all of this out.”

He glanced around the room, eyed the bloody mess, the altar, and the two dead bodies, and then said, “Let’s just… let’s just get out of here.”

Valencia wasn’t far from Madrid, and once they somehow managed to get to Madrid, Harry could access the magical world and arrange contact with Teddy and the others. From there… hopefully they could figure the rest of this out.

Skull followed him quietly out of the room, only pausing to pick up the knife and close the door firmly behind the two of them. 

Harry looked at him, and then said, “I look like a _mess_.”

Skull barked out a short, humorless laugh, and said, “You feel like a mess.”

Harry’s lips twitched upwards half-heartedly, and he motioned to the bathroom. “Go clean up a bit.” If Harper was telling the truth, they didn’t need to worry about anyone else barging the door down just yet. If not, well…

They’d cross that bridge when they got to it. 

Skull nodded slowly and crossed to the bathroom, shutting the door behind himself. Harry stared at the closed door for a moment, then shook his head and went to go poke around the kitchen. In addition to the bags of take-out on the counter (still warm, the smell of them making Harry’s stomach rumble in hunger) - there was a backpack set on the floor, resting against the cabinets, that Harry missed before, in his cursory look around. 

He crouched and unzipped it. It, like the room, seemed to be treated with a small Extension Charm - Harry pulled out a large brown paper bag, several notebooks, a half-filled water bottle, a wizarding first aid kit, and a pouch that was filled with a reasonable mix of magical and muggle currency. Not an extravagant amount, but certainly enough to survive off for a little while. There were a few changes of clothes tossed in the bag, and some random junk - stray pieces of gum, bits of scribbled on and wadded up papers, empty food wrappers. 

Harry eyed the mess for a moment, then turned and opened the paper bag, peering inside. His eyes widened, and he reached inside to pull the contents out. 

A pair of round spectacles, a jacket and shirt, a pair of jeans and a belt, underwear, socks and shoes, and a familiar holly and phoenix feather wand. 

Harry’s stuff. Everything except for his bag. 

Harry stared, then set the wand aside and gathered everything else in his arms, shuffling over to the bathroom door. He knocked, then when Skull opened the door a crack (face noticeably cleaner, still blinking away water droplets that hung from his lashes and dripped down his nose) he shoved the bundle of clothes and glasses through it. 

“Put these on,” Harry said. Skull stared for a moment, but took the bundle without complaint and shut the door once more. Harry went back to the backpack and rummaged around through it, picking out a pair of clothes that he hoped would fit Skull’s body reasonably well, and then shucking the robes off and pulling the clothes on. 

He kept his eyes closed while dressing and redressing, conscious that this wasn’t his body, and too exhausted to really debate how consent worked in this sort of situation - he just wouldn’t look, problem solved. Harry opened his eyes after shoving the long sleeved shirt on, then bent down to pull on a pair of socks. There weren’t any extra shoes in the backpack, which was a pity, but Harry would settle for this. He shoved everything back in the backpack, deliberating over the first aid kit for a moment before also shoving it away. 

He needed to do something about the mess that currently passed for Skull’s face, but Harry didn’t want to spend any more time here than was absolutely necessary - he’d figure it out when they left. He picked up the grey robe, taking Harper’s wand out of the pocket and tossing that in the bag as well. Harry stood and eyed the sink, leaning over to test the faucet. Cool, clean water rushed out, and Harry stuck part of the sleeve of the robe under the spray, using it to scrub at his face and neck, cleaning some of the blood away. 

His face stung as he wiped at it, and he grimaced, rinsing the robe out under the water and patting his face dry with a different corner of the robe. He turned the faucet off and rolled the robe up, dumping it in the backpack. 

The bathroom door opened just as Harry was zipping the backpack up and slinging it over his shoulder. Skull stepped out, fiddling uncomfortably with Harry’s glasses and holding the robe in one hand. Their eyes met. To Harry’s relief, Skull looked much more put together and less rattled than he had before - washing up had done some good then, beyond the physical. 

“...Are we leaving?” Skull asked, eyes flickering to the backpack and then Harry’s face. 

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I just…” he trailed off, and resisted the urge to shrug helplessly. From the tilt of Skull’s head, he seemed to understand the implied ending anyway. 

Harry was _tired_ , and his head refused to do anything _useful_ , like think - instead, it seemed stuck in a miserable, exhausted fog. 

Skull considered him for a second longer, then said, “Catch,” and tossed him the robe. 

Harry caught it and rolled it up, shuffling the backpack around to stuff the robe in. Skull limped to the windows while Harry was occupied with that, looking down with narrowed eyes. Harry slowly walked up to stand next to him, giving the outside world a curious glance. 

It was still dark outside, but the sky was clear, and the moon was full - it, in addition to the scattered streetlamps below, provided sufficient illumination. Harry eyed the empty street below, watching for any sign of movement. 

Skull made a pleased noise, and pointed downwards, nudging Harry in the side with his elbow. “Plenty of cars,” he said. 

Harry stared at him blankly. 

Skull gave a sheepish half-smile, and then said, “I could hotwire us a car.”

“...You know how to do that?” Harry was painting a tentative picture of Skull’s past, and he wasn’t quite sure what to think of it. 

“Um.” Skull said, now looking the slightest bit hesitant. “Yeah. Where did you…” he paused for a moment, then said, “You said you had friends who could fix this.” He gestured between them, and then at Harry’s slow nod, said, “Where do we need to go to find them?”

Harry fiddled with the backpack straps. “I can contact them in Madrid,” he said. 

There was a look of pleased surprise on Skull’s face. “Huh.” he said. “That… works out.”

Harry quirked an inquisitive eyebrow at him, silently asking for an explanation. 

Skull stepped away from the windows, running his hands up and down his jean-clad thighs nervously. “I have a place we could stay in Madrid,” he said. “While you contact your friends. An apartment. It’s nicer than this-” at this, he gave the surrounding area a severely unimpressed look, “-and, well. No one knows it belongs to me. It should be safe.”

...That worked out almost _too_ well. Harry was tempted to ask what the catch was. 

“Yeah, okay,” he said, instead. Part of him was bothered by the idea of stealing someone’s car, but the more practical side of himself was quick to point out that right now they didn’t have much other choice. Besides, in the grand scheme of things… they could do much worse things. _Had_ done much worse things. Harry very carefully steered his thoughts away from the closed bedroom door, and what laid beyond it. “...Who’s driving?”

“Uh, I figured I would,” Skull said. He blinked at Harry. “...Do you know how to?”

“I have some experience,” Harry said. He decided not to mention that said experience mostly came from crashing his best friend’s family car when he was twelve. 

“Right,” Skull said, slowly. Then, after a brief, uncomfortable pause, “Did you… _want_ to—”

“You can drive.”

Skull looked relieved. “Okay. We heading out, then?”

Harry nodded, then crossed to the hallway, dithering by the kitchen for a moment before giving in and grabbing the bags of take-out. It wasn’t like Harper and Evelyn were going to be eating them, and Harry was hungry. 

Skull unlocked and pulled the door open, poking his head out and looking both ways cautiously before stepping out, Harry right behind him. The hall was empty, the other apartment doors firmly closed. 

They were quiet as they crept down the hall, and took the stairs down. Only three flights until they were in the lobby, and then only a few more seconds until they were pushing the door open and stumbling down stone steps to the sidewalk. Harry exhaled a breath of relief, and breathed in the cool night air. It was cold enough to ache a little, as it settled in his lungs, but the temporary discomfort was worth every inch of the refreshment Harry felt settle itself into his bones. 

After a second or two, Harry released another breath and glanced over at Skull, whose head was tilted up towards the sky, his eyes closed, his breaths steady and even, his face slackened in obvious relief. He finally looked relaxed, like some invisible burden had finally fallen off his shoulders, releasing lines of tension from his face and body that Harry hadn’t quite noticed until they had gone. 

Six months, Skull had said. Even if he didn’t remember all of it… just the feeling of fresh, unfiltered air across his face must’ve felt blissful. 

Harry tugged at Skull’s jacket to catch his attention, then tilted his head down the street, towards the cars parked on the curb. Skull opened his eyes, spared one last glance up towards the sky, then brushed oast Harry, leading the way to the cars. 

They walked briskly, eyes darting around nervously at the shadows, looking carefully over their shoulders. The first few cars they came across had Skull pursing his lips, giving them doubtful once-overs before shaking his head and saying, “Not this one.”

Eventually, they managed to find a car that fit Skull’s criteria - he gave it one of his once-overs, then deemed it ‘alright’ with the enthusiasm of a toddler being presented with broccoli for dinner. Harry hung back and glanced around the street, anxious, as Skull tugged the knife out of his pocket and finagled with the car door. After a minute or two, Skull finally popped it open, and Harry jumped slightly as the alarm began to blare out, obnoxiously loud in the quiet street. It only lasted for a few seconds, before Skull leaned in and fiddled with something by the dashboard, and the alarm cut off-mid beep - but that was enough to get Harry’s heart racing in his chest as he squinted around at the buildings surrounding them, trying to figure out if anyone else had heard and was coming to investigate.

Skull jerked his head at Harry in a clear indication to get in, and Harry hurried over to the passenger door while Skull bent over and messed around with something under the wheel. The car roared to life as Harry clambered in, dumping the take-out bags at his feet and shutting the door behind himself firmly. 

Skull slid into his seat and closed the door. “Seatbelt,” he said calmly, reaching up to tug his into place. 

Harry narrowed his eyes at him and jerked the seatbelt on pointedly. Skull’s lips twitched up into the barest hint of a smile, and he shifted gears and pulled them away from the curb. The radio was playing some classical music station, the low sounds of piano filling the car. Harry glanced at the clock, and the time blinked back at him, lit up in neon green. It was almost two in the morning. 

They drove in silence for a few minutes, Harry watching the buildings and streets blur by in a quiet sort of daze that was only interrupted when Skull reached over and began to fiddle with the radio - turning the sound up, jumping around the radio stations until he settled on one that was playing a pop song Harry vaguely recognized. Some woman singing something about poker. 

Harry didn’t really get the appeal, but Skull made a pleased noise and began humming along, drumming his fingers against the wheel in an absentminded rhythm. 

“How long does it take to get from here to Madrid?” Harry asked. He wasn’t all that used to non-magical ways of travel that didn’t include a train - why bother, when the alternatives were so much faster, and so much easier? 

“Around four hours,” Skull said, glancing at Harry, pausing for a moment, and then returning his gaze to a road. “A little less, maybe.”

Four hours. Harry could do that.

“...Do you have anything in that bag that could maybe, I don’t know,” Skull said hesitantly, darting another glance at him. “Fix my face up a bit? I mean…” He made a face. “I don’t think I’ve ever looked this bad. It’s hard on my self-esteem.” Another pause, while Harry snorted, and then, “Or, I mean, if not, I could stop somewhere and grab some supplies. Wouldn’t take long.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said, already unzipping the backpack and digging through it for the first-aid kit. “I have something.” 

He shoved the backpack down by his feet, then settled the kit on his lap and popped it open, rummaging through it curiously for a moment, cataloging its contents. 

It had the usual bandaged and potions and ointments - a few Antidotes to Common Poisons, some Pepper-Up, a few Wound-Cleaning potions, and - _bingo_ \- some vials of Pain Relief. There was some burn paste, bruise ointment, and a small tub of some cream that claimed - in large, cheerful green letters - that it could knit cut skin back together ‘with nary a blemish!’. Harry eyed it, then flipped down the sun visor and examined Skull’s face in the small mirror. 

Skull wasn’t joking - his face looked a proper mess. Harry had done his best to clean up the blood, but he had missed a few smudges here and there, and that was ignoring the places on his face that were bleeding all on their own. Even if one managed to ignore the dubious picture that painted, though, there was no ignoring the deep, inflamed looking cut that started at his jawline, by his mouth, and cut up vertically, swerving at the last moment to (luckily) avoid nicking his eye, curving up by his nose, and ending just as it bit into the eyebrow on the opposite side of his face. 

There was another bruise blooming down his forehead and curving around his cheek and ear, and another, spreading right atop the cut on his cheek, where Harper’s fist must’ve slammed into it. His left eye was swollen, and his face was decorated with smaller cuts and scratches, but even beyond the cuts and bruises, Skull’s face looked gaunt and thin, the shadows under his eyes dark and pronounced. His purple hair didn’t do him any favours - if anything, the purple accentuated his paleness and made him look sickly; though there was a part of Harry that was fond of the color. 

An eccentric choice, to be sure, but one that made Harry feel warmer towards Skull - perhaps it was his years of knowing Tonks, then eventually, Teddy, with their fondness for eye-catching and similarly eccentric hair colors. Or maybe it was before even that - a holdover from Harry growing up with the Durselys and their aversion to anything deemed unnatural. Unsurprisingly, growing up in such an environment with them had not encouraged the same aversion in Harry - if anything it had quite the opposite effect. 

Although, Harry noted, leaning closer to the mirror and tugging the strands this way and that, Skull’s hair wasn’t entirely purple. The roots had grown out a few inches, and they were a light brown in color - the same shade as Skull’s eyes. 

Harry let go of Skull’s hair and leaned back, starting to work on patching up his face - he applied a Wound- Cleaning potion and made a face as it stung and smoked against his skin, and carefully dabbed the cream onto the large cut. Quickly slathering some of the bruise ointment on (wrinkling his nose at the smell), Harry rustled through the bandages and slapped some on. Giving Skull’s face a once-over, Harry shrugged to himself, and uncorked and downed a vial of Pain Relief. 

He rustled through the kit to find another one, and tipped it towards Skull, who had been darting curious, somewhat confused looks Harry’s way during the entire process. 

“Do you want it?” Harry asked. “It’ll help with the pain.”

“What, like Advil?”

“Uh,” Harry said. “It’s a Pain Reliever.”

Skull was quiet, but after a few seconds he blew out a breath and said, “Sure. Gimme it.”

Harry uncorked it and handed it over, and Skull tipped the vial into his mouth, making a face at the taste, but swallowing dutifully nonetheless. He passed the vial back, and Harry pushed everything back into the kit and closed it, shoving it back in the bag and zipping it up. 

He flipped the sun visor back up and then exhaled, relaxing and letting his body sink bonelessly into the seat, turning to stare out the window, watching the scenery zip by. The car hummed beneath him, the radio blaring out another pop song that Skull hummed along to under his breath. The time between Harry’s lazy blinks lengthened and stretched, and soon Harry’s eyes slid shut and didn’t open again. 

* * *

He awoke to Skull shaking him gently, leaning over the space between their seats. “We’re here,” he said, leaning away once he had Harry’s attention. 

Harry blinked fuzzily, then nodded and sat up, grabbing the backpack and unbuckling himself, stumbling out the door. He stared around at the half-full parking lot, illuminated by the grey dawn light that was trickling over the horizon and through the gaps in the buildings around them. He turned back to grab the take-out bags and closed the door, following Skull as he led them out the parking lot, across the street, and up the steps of the building. 

Despite the odd few hours of sleep Harry had managed to snatch, he still felt exhaustion clawing at him, weighing down his steps and keeping him mute and subdued as Skull led them up the stairs a few flights, then down the hallway to the door at the very end. He finally broke his silence as Skull pulled out a key and fit it into the lock, eyebrows quirking together in confusion. 

“Where’d you get that?”

“Hm? Oh.” Skull unlocked the door and paused with his hand on the knob. “I have a locker in the city I keep a few things in. I stopped by while you were sleeping and grabbed the key.” He made a face. “I don’t really want to break into my own apartment, y’know? I mean, I _could_ , but, well…” 

Skull frowned to himself, then shrugged his shoulders and quirked a half-smile at Harry. “Easier this way, yeah?” He asked, then turned the knob, pushing the door open.

He froze, the doorknob giving a pathetic sounding squeak as his hand tightened its grip on it, his knuckles going white from the pressure, as he stared into his apartment with a mute sort of shock. Harry, head tilting, stepped closer to peer in as well. His eyes widened. 

“Er.” Harry said, for lack of anything else to say. “Did you… leave it like this?”

“...No,” Skull said, stepping in. “I didn’t.”

Harry followed him. 

Skull’s apartment was nice - a large, open space, wooden flooring, lots of windows and comfortable looking, stylish furniture. Harry suspected it would look nicer if it didn’t currently appear like a disaster had torn through it. 

Drawers were ripped open, ripped _off_ , their contents scattered carelessly across the floor. A few of the curtains were hanging crooked and ripped in their windows, a greater number of them crumpled and kicked around on the floor below. The couch cushions had been tossed about haphazardly, some of them ripped open, fluff scattered around aimlessly. A rug had been pulled up from somewhere and discarded in a corner of the room, and some of the couches had been flipped over and broken, pieces lying discarded against the far wall. 

The trail of destruction continued throughout the apartment as far as Harry could see, little knick-knacks tossed to the floor, doors left wide open, their contents ripped through and piled on the floor. 

Skull made a faint sound of distress. “Oh my god,” he said. “My _stuff_.”

“...I thought you said no one knew about this place,” Harry said, closing the door behind them and setting the take-out bags on the floor. “This… doesn’t look like nobody else knows about it.”

Skull was picking through the clutter, toeing around some scattered papers and staring around morosely. He ran his hands through his hair. 

“No one was _supposed_ to know about it,” he said. 

Harry drifted around, careful to avoid the scattered shards of glass he could see glittering on the floor, skating around them on socked feet. “Were you robbed?” 

“I don’t think so…” Skull trailed off, then wandered over to the hallway, disappearing from view. Harry could hear him walking around still, his shoes echoing off the wood floor. Feeling a little bereft, Harry wandered over by the entrance to the hall and picked up a few cushions, brushing them off and piling them on an upturned armchair. 

Skull reappeared after a minute or two, a duffel bag in one hand and a pair of boots in the other, a grim expression on his face. “Definitely not robbed,” he said. “They didn’t bother taking any of the money I had laying around, or anything else of value.”

He tossed Harry the boots, and Harry bent to pull them on. 

“So whoever did this was looking for something,” Harry concluded, clicking the heels of the boots together absently. They were really comfortable. 

“Probably.” Skull sighed, and slumped a little as he looked around regretfully. “...Well. We can’t stay here now.”

Harry rubbed at his face - carefully avoiding the bandaged areas - and said, “We could get a hotel. Do you have an ID I could use?” 

Skull waved the duffel about. “In here,” he said. 

“Alright.” Harry cast one last look about, then walked over and picked the take-out bags back up and said, “Let’s go.”

Skull locked up - perhaps somewhat pointlessly - and they went back to the car and drove around for a bit, looking for a place to stay. Eventually - after some arguing, mostly generated by Skull, who seemed to be extremely picky about these things - they decided on a small, out of the way hotel that seemed to meet Skull’s - quite frankly, _ridiculous_ \- standards. 

The hotel clerk eyed Harry’s bandaged face curiously, but didn’t ask any questions as Harry went through the process of booking a room - two nights, although hopefully they wouldn’t need the second one, if everything worked out. They made their way up to their room in a mutual exhausted silence, and Harry swiped the card and entered, shrugging the backpack off and letting it fall to the floor with a careless _thump_. He picked the bed closest to him and flopped down with a sigh of relief. After taking a moment to luxuriate in the feeling of finally laying down, Harry raised his head to peer at Skull, who was setting the take-out bags down on the small, rickety table, and looking around the room with an expression dangerously close to a _pout_. 

Harry wrinkled his nose, and inwardly hoped Skull would never make that expression ever again while wearing Harry’s face. Or, at the very least, not where anyone _else_ could see him. 

“Relax,” Harry said. “We’re just staying here to rest up. It’s not permanent.”

“I guess,” Skull mumbled, still looking unhappy as he dragged his feet over to the other bed and flopped down on his stomach. Skull let out a groan. “Oh my god,” he said into the bedspread. “This is the comfortable thing I’ve laid on in… in…” Skull’s voice faltered, then trailed off awkwardly. 

“Too long,” Harry supplied, staring up at the eggshell white ceiling. 

Skull made a noise of agreement. “Too long,” he repeated, softly. 

Harry twisted over to face him, scooting up to rest his head on a pillow. He didn’t bother to get under the covers or pull his boots off - now that he was finally on a bed, he found he didn’t have the energy to move an inch more than absolutely necessary. Vaguely, he was aware of Skull sitting up and moving around, toeing off his shoes and fiddling with the bags - and then, he was just barely conscious enough to feel a blanket being draped over him, and to peer blearily through squinted eyes to watch Skull settle himself under the covers of his bed, facing Harry. 

Harry stared at his own face as he slipped down, down, down into unconsciousness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this is chapter went places lol. a few notes on things: 
> 
> 1\. when skull said 'there's something seriously wrong with your body' i would like to clarify - there's nothing _seriously_ wrong with Harry's body at the moment - skull, in khr canon, has a fucking _insanely_ high pain tolerance, and i imagine that if stuck in the body of someone with a more 'normal' tolerance for pain (normal is in parentheses bc i think harry probably has a higher than normal pain tolerance as well tbh - just not as high as skull's), it would probably be _super_ uncomfortable & he wouldn't be used to it. thus the reasoning of 'there's something wrong with this body'. 
> 
> 2\. skull is kinda... all over the place here. that was on purpose. his mental state isn't the best right now lol. one of the reasons for that is while writing the outline for this fic, i realized that although neither skull & harry would exactly be like, super psyched abt the whole body swap thing, skull, one of the arcobaleno, who were cursed to be stuck in the body of two yr olds for quite a few years, probably wouldn't be dealing _great_ with having his body taken away from him again. there are other things that are affecting him ofc, but that's a major one here. if you have any questions about any of this though, i'd be happy to discuss it with y'all! 
> 
> 3\. speaking of outlines - my outline for this fic is mostly (not all but _mostly_ ) a bunch of jokes piled into a gdoc. like the whole apartment scene in the outline was condensed to three lines:
> 
> skull, opening the door: so this is my Super Secret Apartment™, that Nobody Knows About  
> harry: .....  
> harry: damn bitch u live like this
> 
> 4\. there's probably other stuff i most likely need to explain but i can't remember them rn lol. if you have questions about anything, just ask & i'll answer to the best of my ability! 
> 
> & thanks to everyone who commented, bookmarked, left kudos, etc!! y'all angels.
> 
> EDIT 02/08/20: did some remodeling here, folks. reformatted a lot of the events (didn't change anything major abt them, tho) fixed some typos, added some details n took some unnecessary ones away, fixed & added some foreshadowing and some stuff to some of the conversations, etc. probably the most editing that'll be done to any of the chapters. i finally feel happy with this chapter, lmao, which i'm totally psyched about.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry woke with a strangled gasp, body shooting upright as hazy figures shifted and dissipated behind his eyes. His fingers reached up to press against his scar - or rather, where his scar would have been. It served as a sobering reminder to Harry as he ran his fingers over his forehead and found only smooth skin, unblemished by the bumpy, rough texture of scar tissue. It was enough to shake him briefly out of the shaky remnants of his nightmare, to wake him fully to reality. 

He tossed the blanket off himself and stumbled to the bathroom, vaguely noting the human shaped lumped under the covers of the bed next to him as he passed by. His skin felt ill-fitting - at once too taut and too loose, stretched too thin and scrunched too tight. For a long moment he envisioned himself crawling out of his skin - peeling it back, ripping it apart, letting it crumble to the floor as he emerged from it as though it were nothing more than a cocoon concealing his true self. 

His legs weren’t long enough, his hands were scarred in all the wrong places, too pale, too thin, his eyesight an uncomfortable smidgen away from perfection. He longed for the comfortable weight of his own glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, the familiar inadequacy of his own eyes. 

Harry grasped the edge of the sink and turned the faucet on. He stared at the stream of water for a moment, listening to the noise it made as it splashed against the bottom of the sink and gurgled down the drain - and then he slowly turned it off. He had come in here with the vague plan of washing his face - rinsing away the last remnants of his strange, upsetting dreams, along with the disconcerting discomfort he felt in this body. 

He probably shouldn’t get the bandages wet, though. Harry stared at his hand as it lingered on the knob, for a moment so utterly disconnected from himself that it was like he was floating behind himself, watching from above - like he was one of those characters in the video games Dudley had liked to play when they were younger. 

Harry wondered distantly if he should look into acquiring a pair of gloves. Maybe that would help the distinct feeling of _wrong_ that filled him whenever his - _not his. These belonged to a stranger_ \- hands came into view. Harry could live without this quiet distress. 

He shoved his hands in the pocket of his jeans, then walked out to hover by the foot of his bed uncertainly, looking around. The lump under the covers was a good indication that Skull was still asleep - Harry could see tufts of black hair peeking out the top of the covers, and the blankets shifted with every relaxed, rhythmic breath. 

Harry tapped a socked foot against the floor. The clock on the nightstand indicated it was one in the afternoon - this was corroborated by the soft, warm glow of sunlight that peeked around the edges of the yellow curtains, illuminating the room with a dim, hazy glow. Harry’s jacket was tossed over the back of a chair, and the bags of take-out were still on the table, looking relatively undisturbed. Unable to see any of their bags or shoes, Harry peeked inside the closet. Their bags were set inside neatly on the floor, their shoes also placed rather neatly in a row next to them. 

Harry stared at them for a moment, vaguely amused, before crouching and rummaging through the backpack, letting out a small sigh of relief as he tugged his wand out of its depths. Despite the fact that he couldn’t use it - the bracelet was ever present in the back of Harry’s mind - he felt better having it on him. Safer. More secure. 

He put the backpack away and shut the door quietly, creeping over to the take-out bags and settling himself in a chair. He rustled through the bags quietly, keeping half an eye on Skull to watch for signs of wakefulness. He popped open a container and eyed the food within. Harry didn’t recognize it - some sort of rice dish with vegetables and meat - but he was hungry enough to not care about what it might be. He dug in with a plastic fork and chewed thoughtfully on his food, barely registering the flavor beyond an initial reaction of ‘not bad’.

The details of the dream that awoke him was slipping steadily from his mind, and trying to grasp hold of them was like trying to hold smoke. He had the vaguest recollection of a mountain, of walking. Familiar figures walked with him, their faces hazy and indistinct. 

He might not be able to recall much detail, but Harry remembered with startling clarity how it felt. How he felt. A terrible feeling of apprehension had wormed its way into the atmosphere of the dream, permeating ever inch, saturating it with the stirrings of unease, the cold grasp of dread as Harry slogged onwards towards his inevitable fate. And then the end - Harry was almost grateful he couldn’t remember. 

All he had left was the feelings - a terror and alarm that morphed swiftly into an uncontrollable horror mixed with a strange, terrible resignation that was almost _worse_ than the fear itself, worse than the irrepressible desire - the _need_ \- to run far far away, as far as his legs could carry him, even as his legs refused to cooperate, stuck fast to the ground as if he himself was sinking into the earth, the ground closing the distance between them with startling speed, even as his mind _screamed_ at him to move, to do something, _anything_ , to stop this from happening again--

And that was enough. 

Harry repressed a shiver, then stuck another forkful of food in his mouth and frowned, staring at the wall opposite him as he itched lightly at his right wrist, right below where he could feel the outline of the bracelet. Despite the rest of the aches and pains of his body having - mostly - faded away by now, his wrist still stung and itched, throbbing uncomfortably. Harry hadn’t noticed it last night, compared to the other aches and pains of his body - but now it had begun to really bother him. 

Letting out an annoyed _tsk_ -ing noise, Harry tugged the fork out of mouth and stuck it in the rice dish, balancing the container on his lap. He tugged the sleeve of the shirt down and froze, eyes widening and breath catching in his throat. 

His wrist - _Skull’s_ wrist - and parts of his forearm were marked with deep gouges, just below and encircling the bracelet - marks where someone had dug their nails and fingers into the flesh and _ripped_ and _tore_ , rough, angry red scars that crisscrossed with slightly faded lines and recent marks that were scabbed over and throbbing around the edges. Harry raised his free hand and traced the raised lines, swallowing thickly when his fingers and nails fit perfectly into the marks. 

The parts around the edge of the bracelet were the worst - the parts where nails had pressed into it and scratched and scratched and scratched, trying desperately to slip under the bracelet, to gain a grip of some sort, to pry it off - so desperately Skull had ravaged his own skin without care. Harry could feel his pained determination, could see it right before his eyes - testaments to Skull’s futile attempts to wrest himself free of the bracelet by any means necessary were carved into his skin. 

Harry worked his jaw for a moment, then clenched and unclenched his fist, rotating his hand along the full motion of his wrist - it tugged and pulled against the skin as it did so, and throbbed, but Harry could do both of those activities without much trouble. Skull hadn’t damaged any of his fine motor skills, then, hopefully. Harry tapped his fingers against his palm again, for reassurance, to double-check - then lowered his arm to rest it in his lap next to the rice dish.

He stared at it for a few moments longer, feeling suddenly, incandescently _angry_. Angry that Skull would have to resort to this, angry that someone would _allow_ this to happen, would let Skull tear into himself, angry that the people who held him captive obviously hadn’t bothered to _heal_ any of these wounds, leaving them for Skull to suffer through--

“What’re you doing?” 

Harry flinched at the slurred sound of his voice, then hastily pulled the sleeve of the shirt back up and over the bracelet, glancing guiltily at Skull as picking his container of food off his lap and grabbed hold of the fork, as if to say, _who, me? I’ve been eating this whole time_. 

Skull stared blearily back at him, sitting up in bed with the blankets piled around his waist. His eyes were barely open as he squinted at Harry, his hari rumpled with sleep, noticeable lines on his cheek from where it was pressed into the pillow. Harry spared a thought to wonder if he normally looked that rough in the mornings from an outside perspective - then figured the answer to that was _yes_ , probably.

Harry poked around at his food a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. “Nothing,” he said, hoping his tone sounded casual. “Just eating. Did I wake you?”

“Mm.” Skull waved a dismissive hand at him, then flopped back down on the bed, groaning theatrically as he tossed the covers back up over his face. “I don’t know _why_ I’m awake,” he whined through the blankets. “It’s too early.” 

Harry gave a noise of agreement and jabbed at the rice. “Go back to sleep,” he suggested. “You can catch a few more hours, if you want.” 

He could pop over to the magical district while Skull was sleeping - send an owl to Teddy, pick up a few supplies, then head back. All that would be left would be to wait, then. 

That would probably be the most efficient plan - but something in Harry gave a twinge at the thought, shying away from it. He supposed it was only natural to want to stick close to Skull, after what they’d been through together - what they were _still_ going through. 

Skull gave an unintelligible reply, then with another groan tossed the blankets off and sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and squinting around the room. “Nah,” he said. “I should probably get up now.” He paused, looking close to falling asleep sitting up, then said hopefully, “Food?”

Harry pulled the rest of the containers from the bags and set them on the table. “Here,” he said. “It’s, er, a little cold, but…” 

“I don’t care,” Skull said, getting up and stumbling over to Harry. He collapsed in the other chair and accepted the fork Harry passed him, grabbing one of the containers at random and not even bothering to look at it before digging in. 

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Harry poking around at his food half-heartedly, appetite vanished, while Skull dug in with enthusiasm, barely looking up from his food. 

“I want coffee,” Skull mumbled after a little while, reaching for another container to pop open. “It doesn’t even need to be _good_.”

Harry set his take-out container on the table, half-finished. “I could go for some hot chocolate,” he conceded. 

“Hot chocolate?” Skull squinted at Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I don’t like coffee.”

Skull looked as though he didn’t know what to say to that - his mouth opened and closed a few times, and then he finally shook his head, squinting down at his food and swirling his fork around in some noodles. 

“Alright,” Skull said. “Coffee and hot chocolate.” He popped his forkful of noodles in his mouth and chewed, mumbling something through the mouthful. Harry quirked an eyebrow at him. 

Skull swallowed pointedly, then said very clearly, “Where do we need to go to get in contact with your friends? Do we need to drive some more?”

“Oh.” Harry thought for a moment. “It shouldn’t be too bad walking to it,” he said. “Just around half an hour, if I’m remembering correctly. And we won’t have to worry about parking the car.” Besides, it would be nice to stretch his legs a little bit and enjoy the nice autumn air - now that the ache from his body was mostly gone, Harry was eager to take advantage of it. 

Skull pursed his lips as he thought this over. “...Yeah,” he said eventually. “Okay. I could use some fresh air, anyway. Plus-” and he brightened, just a bit, “-we can pick up some coffee on the way.” 

Harry snorted. “Sure,” he said. “We can do that.”

While Skull ate, Harry excused himself to the bathroom with the purpose of checking the bandages - Skull had grunted and mumbled a ‘yeah, go ‘head,’ when Harry checked with him, so Harry figured it was alright, and he snagged the backpack out of the closet and flicked on the bathroom light, leaving the door open a crack. 

The face was relatively quick - the bruises were noticeably faded, and Harry had the half-hope that this application of the ointment would be the last. He winced a bit as the cut was revealed, better looking than he had seen it last (which wasn’t saying much), but not even close to being ‘knit together with nary a blemish!’ as the cream claimed. Harry wasn’t really surprised - he suspected that the cream was mostly used for smaller cuts (it _was_ only a first-aid kit, after all), and most people afflicted with more severe wounds went to the hospital, or a healer, rather than trying to stitch it up themselves. 

_I’ll have Hugo take a look at it when I see him next_ , Harry promised himself mentally, dabbing on the cream half-heartedly anyways and slapping a bandage over the lot of it. He then turned his attention to his right arm, giving it the same treatment as his face - Wound-Cleaning potion, then the cream, then bandages. 

He tugged the sleeve back over, shoved everything back into the backpack, and washed his hands before leaving the bathroom. He hadn’t taken very long - maybe a few minutes - and Skull was still digging through his container of noodles. Harry went and sat on the edge of his bed, setting the backpack at his feet as a thought occurred to him. 

“Skull,” he said. “We don’t have to just contact my friends. Is there anyone you need to get in contact with? Let them know you’re okay? We could--”

“ _No_ ,” Skull said, very forcefully. His fork snapped in his hand, pieces flying in seperate directions and clattering to the floor. Skull blinked at his hand, momentarily taken aback, before subsiding and sitting back, drumming his fingers against the table. “...Well,” he said, jaw clenching and unclenching. “Not right now. I’ll have to… but later.” 

Harry eyed him. “...Okay,” he said. 

Skull eyed his food and then pushed himself away from the table, standing and stretching. He ambled to the bathroom, then paused as a thought seemed to occur to him, and then said awkwardly, “Look, um. I need to. Uh. Use the bathroom. Could I…?” He flapped his hands around and made a few gestures. 

...Merlin’s _beard_. Harry resisted the urge to bury his suddenly flaming face in his hands, and said, sounding slightly strangled, “Yup, go right ahead.” 

Skull, looking infinitely more awkward, gave a jerky nod and darted into the bathroom, shutting it behind him. Harry flopped back on the bed and gave into the temptation to cover his face with his hands. 

Using the bathroom was just going to be one in a long line of awkward necessities, Harry could already tell. Some part of him knew that there was no point in getting in getting embarrassed over it - bodily functions were a natural part of life. It was just _different_ when it was someone else dealing with _your_ bodily functions because they were _stuck in your body_. 

He heard the toilet flush, then the faucet turn on as Skull washed his hands. After another minute or so, Skull popped back out of the bathroom. “Hey--” he started. 

“ _I don’t want to know_ ,” Harry said, very quickly, face still covered by his hands. 

“Um. What?” A pause, then, “ _Oh_. Uh - it’s not anything about that. Although-” Harry could feel the bed sink slightly as Skull sat next to him. “-look, this is going to be, _um_ , awkward for both of us, right? So… maybe we should just… agree to not be weird about it…?” He trailed off, fittingly awkward. 

Harry cautiously uncovered his face and he and Skull stared at each other, Harry’s expression of mortification echoed on Skull’s face. 

“Sure,” Harry said, still speaking very quickly, still sounding slightly strangled. His face was on _fire_. “We just won’t be weird about it.”

“Agreed,” Skull said, just as quickly. 

Harry sat up and busied himself with the backpack. “So, um,” he said, fiddling with the zipper. “What were you saying earlier?” 

“Oh.” Skull blinked, then pointed at his eyes. “Your eyesight is godawful. Have you seen your glasses around? I can’t remember where I put them.”

“Er.” Harry didn’t bother to take offense at the proclamation of how bad his eyesight was - Skull was right - and stared around the room searchingly. It wasn’t on the nightstand, or the table, or the dresser… 

They searched for a few minutes - which mostly mean that Harry got up and looked around while Skull hovered and squinted at things with a look of consternation firmly affixed upon his face - and Harry eventually managed to discover them under one of the beds. 

“...How did they manage to get there?” Harry asked, handing them off to Skull.

“Um,” Skull said, shrugging and giving a nervous laugh as he slid the glasses on. No further answers were forthcoming. 

Harry shrugged it off, then retrieved their shoes from the closet and bent to tug his on. “Ready to go, then?” 

“Just a moment-” Skull snatched up Harry’s jacket and darted over to the closet, crouching to rummage around in the duffel for a few seconds, pulling out a leather wallet and stuffing it in his pocket. “-alright. Let’s go.” 

The fresh air was nice - Harry had been right about that. He lingered outside the coffee shop as Skull went in to order their drinks, enjoying the sun on his face, the breeze that whistled through the streets. After a few minutes, Skull pushed the door open, juggling their drinks in one hand. He passed a cup off to Harry, who mumbled his thanks and wrapped his hands around it, inhaling the warm scent of chocolate. Something about it smelled a little differently than usual - a bit more cloying, sticky. 

Harry chalked it up to a different recipe, and eagerly took a sip. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Skull doing the same. 

Immediately, Harry had to force himself not to spit it back out, face twisting in disgust as he forced himself to swallow, and then gagged. Beside him, Skull made a faint noise of horror. 

“This tastes _terrible_ ,” Skull said, aghast. “When I said the coffee didn’t need to be _good_ , I didn’t mean _this_.”

They looked at each other, and then the realization set in. 

“Oh my god,” Skull whimpered, dropping his face into his free hand. “Even _coffee_?”

Harry didn’t reply, too caught up in his own sense of betrayal - even his favorite comfort drink was conspiring against him. 

“Who doesn’t like hot chocolate?” Harry finally demanded. Skull lifted his head to narrow his eyes at Harry. “ _Why don’t you like hot chocolate_?” 

“It’s too sweet!”

“That’s the _best_ part!”

“Take another sip of that drink and then tell me that with a straight face,” Skull said. 

Harry couldn’t help the queasy expression that crossed his face at the thought of that. “There’s something wrong with your tastebuds,” he said. 

“ _My_ tastebuds?!” 

A couple passing by gave them odd looks at the outburst, and Skull gave them an utterly unimpressed, slightly withering one in return - they blanched and hurried away, casting worried glances over their shoulders as they went. 

“Let’s just switch drinks,” Harry said, watching them go. “You’ll like this one, and-” he darted a doubtful look at the cup of coffee. “-I’ll probably like that one. Win-win.”

Skull cast a similarly doubtful look at the hot chocolate, but agreed, and they exchanged drinks. 

Harry took a careful, cautious sip, and rather regretfully found that it wasn’t bad at all - enjoyable, even. 

“So,” Skull said, taking the lid off the cocoa and blowing at it. “Where we off to next?”

* * *

The way the entrance to the magical district in Madrid was hidden was rather simplistic and inconspicuous in its design - in _theory_ , apparently, since Harry was having so much trouble actually _finding_ it. 

“ _Harry_ ,” Skull said, after the thousandth time Harry let out a sound of frustration and wheeled around, pacing away and peering at the street names with a scowl. “What are you looking for, exactly?”

Their drinks had been long since consumed and discarded - they had been walking around for _much_ longer than thirty minutes. It felt like hours, but Harry suspected that was the frustration talking. He had been dragging them back and forth and around in circles, and there was still no _sign_ of that damned statue that marked the entrance. 

“The _entrance_ ,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I swear I’ve used it before - I don’t understand why I can’t _find_ it now.” He paused, then turned to Skull. “Have you ever been?”

Skull looked slightly baffled. “Can’t say I have,” he said slowly. 

Harry blew out a breath of air. “Alright,” he said. “There should be this statue of an old man-” Harry raised a hand above his head and waved it slightly to indicate the height of the statue. “-set on this pedestal. It’s sitting in a small nook that’s just off one of these streets. It’s _somewhere_ around here. I just…” Harry turned in a slow circle and let out another sound of frustration. “Can’t _find_ it.”

“Huh.” Skull said, an odd cadence to his voice. “Does he have a really long beard? He’s holding a really big book?” 

“Er,” Harry said, briefly taken aback. “Yeah. How d’you--”

“He’s back there,” Skull said, pointing behind Harry. “We’ve passed him like fifty times.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harry said, frowning. “I would have seen him.”

“Come on, I’ll show you.” Skull started walking, gesturing for Harry to follow. 

Harry did, somewhat reluctantly, not convinced Skull wasn’t pulling his leg. They crossed the street and Skull led them left, where there were less people passing by, less of a crowd lingering. They had been walking for less than five minutes when Skull paused and turned to a blank stretch of wall, extending an arm to gesture at it as if to say, _see? Told you so._

Harry’s eyes slid over it and then away, utterly disinterested. “Skull,” he said. “There’s nothing there.”

Skull stared at Harry. 

“You’re joking,” he said. 

“ _No_ , I’m not. C’mon, we don’t have time for this.”

Skull darted forward and snagged Harry’s wrist before he could walk away. “Harry--” he started, sounding agitated. 

“ _Skull_ ,” Harry snapped. “Stop joking around. This is serious, alright? We need to find--”

Skull tightened his grip on Harry’s wrist and dragged them over to the wall. “I’m not lying to you,” he said, his agitated tone bleeding into something pleading. “And I’m not - I’m not… I don’t think I’m making this up, alright?”

Harry frowned and then opened his mouth to demand Skull let him go - but Skull babbled on, the words rushing out of him like a flood. 

“We’re at the statue. We’re standing right in front of it. What do you need to do? Is there - you said this was an entrance. Where’s the door?”

“This is ridiculous,” Harry said. He paused as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Skull - I think I left the money at the hotel. We need to go back.”

“I have money,” Skull said. “Just tell me what we need to do here.”

“No, seriously,” Harry said, struggling to free himself from Skull’s grip - either Harry’s body was _much_ stronger than he remembered being, or Skull was a lot weaker, because his hand around Harry’s wrist didn’t budge. “We need to go back--”

“Harry, you need to tell me what to do here. The statue--”

“Who cares about a statue? The money--”

“ _Harry_ ,” Skull snapped, and he slammed his free hand down on - _something_. Harry couldn’t quite focus on whatever it was - as soon as he tried, he remembered that one of his laces on his boots was untied, and he was bending to fix it when it occurred to him that he _really_ should be getting back to the hotel - he needed to grab the money, and check on the car, it was important he checked on the car--

“That wasn’t very nice, young man,” a grave, gravelly voice said. “Do you often go around taking out your frustrations on innocent statues?”

“Uh,” Skull said, very eloquently. 

There was a sigh. “ _Tourists_ ,” that same gravelly voice said, sounding extremely put out. “Very well. I suppose you need entrance to Trasmoz?”

“Um. Yes.” Skull said. “Uh - please?”

A chuckle. “I see you’ve finally found your manners. Better late than never. Welcome to Trasmoz - just step up here and enjoy your stay.”

Harry straightened up slowly, and his eyes finally _focused_. It was like a fog being swept away - Harry could finally think straight, unclouded. There was no longer the desperate need to return to the hotel - Harry remembered quite clearly that the money was safely secured in his backpack - although one of his boot laces actually was untied. Harry ignored that. 

The wall was no longer a blank stretch - it had disappeared, revealing a small nook that contained a pedestal, a statue of an old man with a beard down to his ankles was standing to the side of it, a thick book tucked under his arm. 

“Well?” The statue said. “I don’t have all day.”

Skull looked at Harry. “...You can see this, right? I’m not…” Skull trailed off, but the implied ending hung in the air - _I’m not going crazy, right?_

“No,” Harry murmured. A realization had settled over him - something that twisted his stomach into knots, had his hands shaking with nerves. “You’re not.”

The entrance to Trasmoz was hidden by - amongst other things - Muggle Repelling Charms. 

Harry hadn’t been able to find the entrance. 

The charms had worked on him. 

He stepped numbly onto the pedestal and tugged Skull - who was still holding onto his wrist, although his grip was significantly looser - up with him. 

The statue said, “Enjoy your trip,” with a droll sort of tone that implied this was a phrase he repeated quite a bit, and the world spun around them, blurring into streaks of color and indecipherable shapes, before gradually slowing, revealing them to be standing on a pedestal in a similar nook on the side of a bustling street - the statue nowhere to be seen. 

It was obviously magical - owls swooped around, and the people that bustled past were wearing all manner of robes and cloaks and hats. Harry spotted a parent waving their wand about and sending up sparks for the entertainment of their small children, while a witch ducked past them, chasing a ferret determinedly through the crowd. 

Some of the window displays from the shops were visible from their vantage point - there was a broomshop with children gathered around the windows, pressing their faces against it as they _oohed_ and _aahed_ over the latest model of racing broom, an apothecary, advertising their sales and ingredients with bright, twisting smoke that hung outside their shop, and a bookshop, where books displayed themselves by floating around and flipping themselves open and closed. The sun painted the streets in a warm glow, glinting off of windows and warming the cobbled ground. 

He looked up to Skull, whose face was awash with wonder, eyes darting everywhere, never resting on one place for too long, the last bits of pinched stress on his face melting into something akin to childish awe. Harry was familiar with what Skull was experiencing - he had felt the same thing, the first time he had entered Diagon Alley. 

“What…” Skull glanced down at Harry, eyes wide. “What is this place?”

Harry’s lips twitched upwards slightly, his enjoyment at the look on Skull’s face tempered by the writhing mass of knots in his stomach. _You’re a muggle_ , he thought. _You’re a muggle, and I don’t have magic. I don’t have magic._

“Skull,” he said instead, forcing himself past the creeping panic. “Welcome to the magical district of Madrid - Trasmoz.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a shorter chapter this time! consider this a breather chapter of sorts w/sprinkles of foreshadowing tossed around, haha. some notes:
> 
> 1\. the bathroom scene 3.0. body swap is one of my favorite tropes just because of the _implications_ of things like this. stuff like: consent in regards to a. undressing, showering, bodily functions, etc, or b. even just the sheer _awkwardness_ of dealing with situations like these. honestly? look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn't be the _slightest_ bit uncomfortable or embarrassed by a veritable stranger prancing around in your body & needing to shower or use the bathroom. like, all bodies are beautiful & bodily functions are natural & there's nothing to really be ashamed about - but _still_.
> 
> 2\. as far as i know, a magical district in madrid is not referenced in harry potter - i used the same naming conventions that fantastic beasts 2 used for the french magical quarter (which is called montmartre, named after the top of this sacred hill where it was believed that druids worshiped) & called it trasmoz, after a town in spain believed to have been cursed because of all the rumors of witchcraft that surrounded it - its kinda interesting! if u want to read something about it, there this: x (also, i totally borrowed the statue thing from fbawtft as well - same concept, different execution! i really loved that bit in the movie lol) 
> 
> 3\. im honestly not sure of skull's taste in food in canon - i like to headcanon harry as having a bit of a sweet tooth, so i just switched skull to be the opposite way round because the thought entertained me IMMENSELY. 
> 
> 4\. i might be forgetting stuff again, but if there's anything you're confused about/would like me to clarify, just pop me a question below! 
> 
> & thanks again to y'all for the kudos, comments, etc!! honestly every time i got a notification i got the DUMBEST smile on my face - it was great
> 
> EDIT: alright me linking the article like that just straight up didn't work - here's the url bc i have no idea how work ao3, lmao. https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/06/spains-mysterious-cursed-village-of-witches/


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jazz hands* hot off the press y'all

“Wait,” Skull said. “ _Magical_?” 

“Mm,” Harry said, hopping off the pedestal. Skull stumbled down after him. 

“ _Wait_ , Harry - this isn’t, I thought - what do you mean, _magical_?” 

Harry’s heart sunk deeper, descending from his stomach to rest somewhere around his kneecaps as the last tiny, flickering hope of doubt Harry had been kindling snuffed itself out. 

“Right,” Harry said, his voice feeling as though it was coming from somewhere very far away. “There’s some things I probably need to explain-” some things _you_ need to explain, Harry thought, but did not say, “-and I will, but right now - _yes_ , magic is real, and what happened to us-” Harry gestured between the two of them, “-was and _is_ magic. Okay?”

Skull stared down at him with wide eyes. “Um,” he said. 

“Good,” Harry said. “I need to send an owl off to Teddy, and then we can sit and talk.” 

An odd expression crossed Skull’s face at that - a slightly pinched, pensive look - but Harry shrugged it off for now - he didn’t have the energy to analyze it, not when all of his available energy was going towards keeping himself focused and calm. One thing at a time. Get a message to Teddy, explain things to Skull - get an explanation for _himself_ , while he was at it - and _then_ freak out. 

Harry could prioritize. 

“C’mon,” Harry said, and - glancing behind to make sure Skull was following - he started off towards the Owl Post Office. Surprisingly, Skull didn’t utter a single word as they walked, staying mute as he stuck close to Harry and stared around at the shops and people with wide eyes, that same pensive expression on his face, pinched around the edges - what from though, Harry couldn’t tell. Frustration, maybe, or confusion - both perfectly normal reactions to being thrust unaware into a brand new world. 

The post office was thankfully uncrowded - there were just a couple others waiting around with packages and letters, so Harry got in line and used the waiting time to dig through the backpack, ripping out a spare piece of notebook paper and grabbing the money pouch. 

After that, there wasn’t much to distract him from his thoughts, so Harry shifted around and decided to focus on the most prevalent thing in the post office - the _smell_.

This Owl Post Office, as with all the Owl Post Offices Harry had the pleasure of visiting in the past, stunk to high heaven. 

Sometimes, Harry liked to contemplate how, exactly, something like this came to be - one would think, with magic at their disposal, wizards would figure out a way to best the smell of owl droppings - or at the very least, _mitigate_ the pungent odor so it wasn’t quite so overpowering. It seemed, though, that this was truly where magic had reached its limits - that, or all Owl Post Offices were unbreakably cursed to stink eternally, as an everlasting, futile reminder to wizard-kind to stay humble. 

_Yeah, you might have magic_ , Harry imagined this theoretically cursed Owl Post Office was saying, _but do you think most Muggles have to suffer through unbearably putrid smells when **they** want to mail a letter off? Keep dreaming._

Mostly though, Harry was willing to put it down to laziness. 

“Hello,” Harry said, upon reaching the front of the line. “Could I borrow some quill and ink? And, er - an envelope?” 

The unimpressed looking employee slid some over, and Harry flashed a quick, thankful smile, then bent over and scratched out his message to Teddy. Not anything too long or detailed, on the off-chance the message was intercepted - or at the very least, nothing that looked detailed to the untrained eye. 

Harry finished off the message, folded the paper, and stuffed and sealed the envelope. He scrawled Teddy’s name atop the front, then - smiling somewhat sheepishly at the employee - paid for the fastest delivery owl. 

Skull stayed silent throughout this entire process - hovering behind Harry, head turning this way and that as he examined the post office, his nose wrinkled slightly. He finally spoke as they exited, Harry stepping aside to hold the door open for a harried looking witch juggling multiple packages. 

“Teddy,” he said. Harry tilted his head to show he was listening, even as the witch thanked him and disappeared inside. The door swung shut behind her. “Where is he, exactly?” 

“We were last supposed to meet up in Italy,” Harry said absently, scanning the street to try and find a quiet area where they could sit and talk. He spotted a small alcove whose path he knew led to a small, typically unused - and therefore, uncrowded - courtyard, and began steering them that way. “Turin. But that was a few days ago, so I’m not really sure now. He could still be there, or…” Harry trailed off with a small shrug, trying not to betray how anxious his inability to accurately answer Skull’s question made him. 

The alcove pathway was shaded by the building walls that loomed on either side of it - it was significantly cooler here, without the sun to gently warm the ground, and their footsteps echoed off the cobble stone and bounced around the walls. Harry’s voice seemed too loud here, his words taking up more space than he intended as they resounded around and echoed, fading gently into the air. 

“Italy?” Skull asked. There was something in his voice that sparked Harry’s curiosity - a casualness that rang too false, too forced. “What were you there for?”

“Vacation,” Harry said. 

Skull stifled a laugh, and then, at Harry’s questioning look, clarified with, “Sorry, it’s just - this is kinda a shitty way to end a vacation.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t think this is what my friends meant, exactly, when they told me I needed to get out of the house.”

The pathway opened up into the courtyard - still bracketed by walls, still pleasantly shaded, with stone benches set against the walls, and a circular plot of dirt in the center than grew a small tree and little bits of flowers and bushes. It was a nice area - Harry had found it on his last visit here, a few years ago. 

After ensuring it was empty of anyone else, Harry dropped himself down on a bench, then looked up to Skull who was still hovering, looking around curiously. 

“Alright,” Harry said, feeling slightly awkward. “If you have any questions, now’s the time.” 

Skull seated himself gingerly next to Harry, leg bouncing up and down with a nervous sort of energy. “The message you sent, uh, Teddy - will it get to him fast enough?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Depending on where he is - it’ll take either around a couple hours or half a day or so.” 

“...Right,” Skull said. “And this-” he gestured between him and Harry, his leg bouncing ever faster, “-he can fix this? With… magic?” 

“Uh,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his head. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but hopefully, yes.”

“Complicated?” Skull sat up straighter, his bouncing leg slowing to a stop. “How?”

Harry’s mouth twisted uncertainly as he struggled to find the right way to phrase the answer to that, Finally, after a long moment, he said, “What happened to us - I’ve never heard of something like this before, Skull. It’s not simple magic. Whatever we need to do to fix this - it probably won’t be simple either.”

Made more complex by the fact that currently, it appeared that Harry was now, for all intents and purposes - a muggle. The weight of his wand burned into the side of his leg from where it was tucked into his waistband. He had the urge to take it out, to try a simple spell, to see if maybe he was _wrong_ , that maybe the Muggle Repelling Charms had been a fluke - any pain the bracelet might give him over attempting magic would be worth the sheer utter relief Harry would feel upon confirmation that he still had his magic - 

\- but he resisted the urge. Alongside the possibility of relief laid the path that struck Harry cold with dread - the fear that nothing would happen, and it would be confirmed once and for all that Harry’s magic was gone. 

For now, the thought of attempting magic filled Harry with a dizzying mix of equally painful hope and dread. He would have to face the answer eventually, one way or another - and he _would_ , he just needed…

Time. 

Skull was frowning at Harry now. “But you said - you said they could fix it. Your friends.”

“I don’t know of anyone else that has a better shot,” Harry answered truthfully. “But… it’ll take some work.” He paused, then added, “And time.” 

Skull’s jaw worked for a moment. “Time,” he said eventually. “I can work with that.”

Harry didn’t bother to point out that he would probably _have_ to, regardless of willingness - there was no point in rubbing salt in the wound. 

After a few seconds of mutual silence, Skull let out a groan and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, dropping his head into his hands. “My head hurts,” he said. “Thinking about this is giving me a headache.” 

Harry eyed him. “You’re taking this pretty well, actually,” he said. “Is there anything else you wanted to know right now?”

“Plenty,” Skull said. “But also, weirdly enough…” he trailed off, then scrubbed a hand through his hair, messing the strands up even further than their usual arrangement of disaster. “I dunno,” he said, finally. “This is all… I mean…” 

Harry tilted his head at Skull, and waited patiently as he fumbled to finish his thought. Somewhere in the tree, a bird chirped cheerfully. 

“...It’s crazy,” Skull said. “I _know_ that. But it makes… some things make _sense_ now. And it feels...” Skull gestured aimlessly, searching for words. “...I’m going to sound crazy, but it feels… _familiar_ , if that makes sense. All of this. Like it just… clicks. Is that weird?”

“...If it is,” Harry said, “I couldn’t tell you. I’ve always felt that way.”

Despite everything Harry had gone through, that remained true - the magical world had always been familiar and comforting in a way the muggle world had never been able to replicate. 

From the moment Harry had seen his first Hogwarts letter, from the moment Hagrid had kicked down the door to that miserable shack on Harry’s eleventh birthday and brought him to Diagon Alley, the moment he had seen the Hogwarts Express, the moment he had seen _Hogwarts_ \- there had been that instant familiarity, the quiet, pervasive feeling of _home_ that kindled itself in his heart. 

Skull turned his head, resting it on his hand, and grinned tiredly at Harry. “Maybe we’re both weird,” he said. 

“I could live with that,” Harry said. 

“Hm,” Skull said, thoughtful. “Yeah. Me too.”

He sat up and adjusted his glasses, then asked, curiously, “Can you do magic?” 

Harry wasn’t quite sure what the expression on his face was, but it made Skull backpedal hurriedly, even going so far as to raise his hands into the air defensively and lean back slightly as he said, “ _Oh_ , um, I guess not? I mean - I guess you would’ve already, if, um, you could? Right?” 

“...Right,” Harry said flatly, attempting to untwist his expression. “I… er. I can. Just - well. Not right now, exactly.” 

“Oh,” Skull said, quietly. “...That sucks.”

That startled a laugh out of Harry. “Yeah,” he said, and then fell silent, staring across the courtyard at another unremarkable stone bench, likely giving it more scrutiny than it deserved. After a few moments, Harry cleared his throat, then said, “That, er, does remind me of something I’ve been wondering, though.”

“Hm?” 

Harry rubbed a hand over his thigh. “If you’re a muggle,” he said. “Why did they take you?”

Because if Skull wasn’t a wizard, if he wasn’t magical - why was he wearing a bracelet? Why had they locked him away, experimented on him?

....Evelyn had said ‘ _his kind_ ’. 

What had she meant?

“...I’ve never mugged anyone before,” Skull said, sounding almost insulted. 

Harry turned to stare at him, baffled. “ _What_?”

“I said, I’ve never--”

“No, I heard you the first time,” Harry said. He had forgotten that Skull wouldn’t know what a muggle was. “Not mug _ger_ , mug _gle_. It means non-magical.”

“Oh.” Skull scratched the back of his head, then shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” he said. 

It felt like a lie - and a relatively poor one, at that. Harry frowned at him. “You’re lying,” he said. 

Skull winced. “...Yeah,” he admitted, very quietly. 

“Why?” Harry wasn’t angry. All he felt was that same spark of curiosity - why would Skull try to lie about something like this? 

Skull seemed to shrink into himself, and spent a long while staring at his shoes, weighing something within himself. Harry watched, and wondered. 

“It’s… complicated,” Skull finally said. He gestured around at their surroundings. “This world - magic, all of it - I’ve never heard about it, I haven’t seen anything like this. I’m assuming there’s… rules? You have to keep it secret some way, right?” 

“Yeah,” Harry said. “We call it the Statute of Secrecy.”

“Right. Well-” Skull took a deep breath. “-where I’m from, there’s something that’s… essentially the same thing.”

Harry’s eyebrows knit together briefly in confusion. “Okay,” he said, slowly. “But aren’t there… exceptions?”

This whole situation seemed like it might be a pretty big exception. 

“Mmhm,” Skull said, nodding. “The thing is, though…” and he paused for a bit, struggling to find the right words. “I - look. You seem like a nice guy--”

“Thanks,” Harry said, bemused. 

“--and that’s why I can’t tell you.” Skull pushed himself to his feet and paced around, wringing his hands nervously. “If I tell you Harry, you’ll _know_. I can’t take something like that back. Where I’m from - it’s _dangerous_.” 

“I’m asking you to tell me.”

“ _Then you don’t know what you’re asking_ ,” Skull snapped, before abruptly deflating and running a hand through his hair. He appeared to briefly struggle for words once more - Harry watched him, a nervous thrum of energy running through his body. “I don’t want to drag you into that unless I absolutely have to,” Skull said. “ _I_ didn’t want to be dragged into it - I’m not about to do that to someone else. Once you step in there - you can’t just walk away from it, Harry.” There was something bitter in his tone, an old resentment resurfacing, rearing its head. 

“I’d like to see anyone try to stop me,” Harry said. He never had been very good at doing what others told him. “Besides - I’m wrapped up in this anyway, aren’t I?”

“Not yet,” Skull said. “Not entirely.” 

After a moment, he dropped back down on the bench next to Harry and then said, rather firmly, “If we can solve this with magic, if we don’t need anything else - then it doesn’t matter where I came from, or why they took me - it won’t need to come up at all. We can keep it separate - _you don’t need to know_.” Then, quieter, pleading, “You have a choice here, Harry.”

They sat in silence while Harry absorbed that.

The reveal of another secret society didn’t exactly surprise Harry like he suspected it should - it made sense, in an odd sort of way, that there was more hidden out there than the world of magic. Whatever they could do - Skull’s _kind_ , as Evelyn referred to them - was enough that when wizards _did_ find out about them, they decided to kidnap and experiment on them. Wasn’t that enough reason to stay hidden?

But, no. Skull’s concern hadn’t been about that - it had been for _Harry_.

 _Dangerous_ , he said. _You won’t be able to walk away from this._ It was suitably - rather vaguely - ominous. Harry appreciated the sentiment of a warning, but despite that…

“You don’t really think it’ll work that way, do you?” Harry asked Skull. “Your world, my world - they’ve become intertwined, in ways beyond you and me. Evelyn said that there were more people who have been taken, besides you - I’m not just going to forget about them. I want to _help_ them. I can’t do that if I don’t have all the information, Skull. Besides - if it’s half as dangerous as you’re implying, wouldn’t it be safer for me to know?”

Skull looked displeased with this. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted, again. “I’m not joking, Harry. This stuff - it’s dangerous. It would be better if you didn’t have to know. I… I know there are others - but we can still help them. You don’t have to know - _I_ know. I can help. Isn’t that enough?” 

“I don’t know what I’m talking about because you won’t _explain_ anything,” Harry said, getting annoyed despite himself. “This world is dangerous, too. _Magic_ can be dangerous. I think you know that better than most.” 

“I _know_ ,” Skull said, also becoming visibly frustrated. “Look, I get it - I just-” his fists clenched around his knees, body tensing. “-think about it, okay? Think it over. If you really want me to, after - I’ll tell you. All I’m asking for is time.” 

They fell silent, the seconds ticking by painfully slow. 

Skull shifted around after a moment, crossing his arms over his chest and hunching down slightly. Then, “You might look like me,” Skull said, quietly - so quietly Harry had to strain to hear him, “but I don’t want you to have to live my life.” 

It hit Harry, then, that perhaps Skull’s words were not just for Harry alone - perhaps they were something Skull himself had longed to be told, something he had wished someone, _anyone_ , had given _him_. A warning.

A choice. 

“...Alright,” Harry acquiesced, after a moment. “I’ll think about it, then.” He already knew his answer, but part of him suspected that Skull knew that as well, and that the time was perhaps more for Skull than it was for Harry. Skull’s own magic dilemma - they would both have to bite the bullet on the things they were avoiding, but for now… 

Harry could wait a bit for his answers. 

Skull let out a relieved sigh, and pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes. “Okay,” he said. 

They sat in the quiet peacefulness of the courtyard for a long while, the seconds stretching into minutes, blurring into an indeterminable stretch of time. Harry stared at the tree, watched the birds flit in and out, taking to the sky, jumping around the branches, chirping noisily. Eventually he stirred, then glanced towards Skull, who was leaning back against the wall, head tilted upwards, watching the wispy clouds as they blew across the sky. 

“Want to check out some of the shops?” Harry asked. He wasn’t sure of the time, but the sun was still up - couldn’t be too late, then. 

“...Sure,” Skull said, slowly straightening up, looking somewhat cheered by the prospect. “Was there something in particular you wanted to get?”

“Gloves,” Harry said. “You want some?”

Skull blinked, then said, “Yeah, sure.”

* * *

So they got gloves, and afterwards, they wandered. They looked at window displays, peeked into shops, sat on benches and watched as people strolled by. It was a relatively peaceful way to end the day, although Harry caught Skull looking pained a few times, the space between his eyebrows pinched, but when asked, Skull waved it off, saying it was only a headache. 

“Okay,” Harry said. “You don’t want to go back to the hotel and rest a bit?” 

Skull made a noise of disagreement. “No,” he said. “It’s probably just from a lack of water or something. Could we get something to eat? It’ll go away.” 

“...Alright,” Harry said, slowly. “If you’re sure.”

“Yeah.” Skull was peering around them. “Any good places to eat around here?” 

Harry opened his mouth to respond, but Skull didn’t wait for an answer before picking a direction and marching off - apparently having spotted something. Harry stared after him with a raised eyebrow, then hurried to catch up. 

“Huh,” Harry said, as Skull slowed to a stop in front of a small sandwich shop. “Good choice. I’ve eaten here before - the food’s pretty good.” He stepped forward and pulled the door open, then turned to stare at Skull, who was frozen in place, staring up at the restaurant sign with that familiar pinched expression. “Skull?”

“Hm?” Skull shook himself out of it with a small frown, then brushed past Harry with a muttered, _thanks_. 

Harry frowned at his back, then stepped in after him. 

After a brief argument over who would order what, they both eventually came to the agreement that it would be better if they ordered for each other - recognizing that they would know their own taste in food better. 

“I can’t believe you don’t like pickles,” Skull griped, taking a sip of his water and poking at his sandwich with undeserved suspicion. “Or mayonnaise. Who hurt you?” 

“Pickles and mayonnaise, presumably.” Harry said. “It’s not like you’re one to talk, anyway - _anchovies_? On a _sandwich_? You have no taste.”

Skull flipped him off, and Harry smothered his snort in his sandwich. 

The food did seem to help a bit - at the very least, Skull seemed re-energized. They wandered around a bit more after eating, but it was getting dark, the sun slowly dipping back below the horizon, the street lamps lighting even as the shops began to close their doors, and the crowd of people bustling around them slowly began to disperse. 

Harry was about to suggest heading back to the hotel when Skull paused by a small bookshop display window, eyes glued to some of the titles, even as the lights inside the windows began to dim, signifying the end of business hours. “Huh,” he said, thoughtful. “Hermione would probably like one of these, wouldn’t she?”

Harry stopped, his breath catching in his throat. “...What did you just say?” 

Skull glanced at Harry, face still pinched concerningly in pain. “The books,” he said, as thought that was the part that needed elaboration. 

“No,” Harry said, an icy feeling trickling down his spine. “Before that. You said--”

“Harry!” 

Harry stiffened as the familiar voice met his ears, barely believing it - then he whirled around, eyes searching through the few people left lingering on the street, and yes, there, just having turned the corner, positively _sprinting_ towards them, was the familiar sight of bright blue hair and crimson robes. 

_Teddy_. 

Skull turned to look as well, and took a step back in alarm as Teddy slowed to a stop before them, his eyes darting between Harry and Skull, his wand gripped in one hand. 

“Teddy,” Harry said, unbelievably relieved. He took a step forward, about to throw his hands around him - and then hesitated. He eyed Teddy, then said, “What did your father’s boggart turn into?” 

Teddy blinked at him, looking somewhat puzzled. “The moon,” he said. “...Skull, is it?” 

Harry gave a sheepish smile - and gestured at himself. “It’s Harry,” he said. 

Teddy narrowed his eyes at him, then darted a glance at Skull, who looked like Harry. Then back to Harry, who decidedly did _not_. “Okay,” Teddy said slowly. His grip on his wand firmed. “If you’re Harry - you gave me something before I went off to Hogwarts for my first year. What was it?” 

“The Marauder’s Map,” Harry said. He smiled, just a little bit. “If I recall, you got some good use out of it, didn’t you?”

Teddy relaxed, then smiled. “It is you,” he said, and he swept Harry up in a hug. “What is this?” He asked, letting Harry go and peering at his face in concern. “Polyjuice? A glamour? Are you hurt?”

“Not exactly,” Harry said. “And, er, sort of.” He stepped back, and gestured to Skull. “This is Skull. Skull, Teddy.”

Skull gave a strained smile and said, “Hello.” There was a pale, slightly sickly sheen to his face, and he was swaying on his feet alarmingly. 

Harry took a step towards him and said, concerned, “Skull?”

“...My head hurts,” Skull said, dazedly, and his legs started to buckle. Harry and Teddy darted forward at the same time, and they both got an arm under a shoulder, supporting him against themselves and keeping him upright. Skull let out a slight sound of protest as he was jostled, but then fell silent. 

Harry checked - Skull’s eyes were closed, his teeth clenched and face contorted against the pain, but he didn’t seem to be unconscious. He met Teddy’s gaze over Skull’s head. 

“...I would _really_ like to know what’s happening here,” Teddy said, sounding slightly bewildered. He adjusted his grip on Skull’s shoulder, throwing Skull’s arm over his own shoulders, and then continued in a softer undertone, “We’ve all been worried about you, Harry. You have no idea how relieved I was to get your message.” 

Worms squirmed around in Harry’s stomach - pleasure at being cared about enough to have people worried about him, guilt at causing that worry in the first place - and he offered Teddy a small smile. “I’m glad you got here so quickly,” Harry said. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” 

Teddy opened his mouth to reply, but Skull let out another small pained noise, and Teddy closed his mouth and shifted his gaze down, looking slightly sheepish. “Sorry,” he said to Skull. “Are you feeling alright?”

“...Not feeling _great_ ,” Skull eventually mumbled, still leaning heavily against the two of them. “...My head feels like it’s about to split open.”

Harry winced in sympathetic pain, then shifted out from under Skull’s arm, shrugging his backpack off to rummage through it and find a Pain Relieving potion. “Here,” he said, uncorking it and handing it off to Skull. “This might help, at least with the pain.”

Skull eyed the potion with a significant lack of enthusiasm - perhaps remembering the taste from before - but downed it regardless, and passed the empty vial back to Harry.

“Is there anything you two needed from around here?” Teddy asked, shifting around and eyeing the street with carefully evaluating eyes. “Or can I take you two back home now?” He glanced at the both of them, then added, “Hugo could take a look at you guys. Help out with-” Teddy gestured to his face and head with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Skull’s waist, supporting him, “-all of this.” 

Skull winced. “Uh,” he said. “I left my, er. My duffel in the hotel room.”

“Hotel room?” 

“Yeah,” Harry said. “We got a hotel in a muggle area - it’s not that far a walk from here, actually.” Harry grinned tiredly at Teddy. “If you walk us, I can explain everything on the way.” Then they could grab the duffel and go home - Harry felt significantly more cheerful at the thought. 

“Hm,” Teddy said, glancing down at his robes thoughtfully. “Sure. Hold on a second...” he waved his wand over his robes, and the scarlet color darkened to a deep black.

He met Harry’s questioning gaze and grinned. “It’s still Halloween,” he said. “I think I can get away with it, don’t you?” He waved his wand again, and a small black witch hat popped into existence, which Teddy placed on his head at a jaunty angle. Harry watched with fond amusement as his blue hair grew to the length of a bob, and his face shifted, becoming slightly more androygynous. 

“Like my costume?” Teddy asked, holding an arm out for appraisal. He winked down at Skull, who had tilted his head back and was examining Teddy with a raised eyebrow. “I’m a witch.” 

“...No,” Skull said dryly. “Really?” 

Teddy smiled and tucked his wand away, apparently satisfied with his appearance. “Alright,” he said. “Lead the way, Harry.”

* * *

The walk back to the hotel seemed to fly by. Skull staggered alongside them, still somewhat supported by Teddy, but managing to stay mostly upright by himself. Teddy did get a few curious looks for his outfit, but was mostly ignored by the people they passed by. 

Harry took the time to explain everything to Teddy - save for a few sparse details, like Harry’s current lack of magic, and parts of his and Skull’s discussion in the courtyard. He figured that it would be better to bring up the former in a more private place - he suspected that Teddy would also be somewhat horrified, though Harry was trying not to think about it - and the latter was Skull’s choice to divulge, and he stayed noticeably silent. Harry would talk to Skull about it later, but for now, he avoided the topic, though he could see Teddy’s brain whirling around as his gaze darted from Harry to Skull with a frown. 

Teddy seemed to quietly absorb the information that was thrown at him, making small inquisitive noises every now and then to prompt Harry to continue, but staying mostly quiet as they walked. His face gave most of his reactions away - alternating between anger and disgust, concern and a thoughtful pensiveness that meant he was slotting things together in his mind.

“...Those bracelets sound familiar,” Teddy said, eventually, after Harry’s words finally ran dry. “Can I take a look at them at the hotel?”

Harry blinked at him, surprised. “You’ve heard of them before?”

“If they’re what I’m thinking of,” Teddy said, somewhat grim, “then yes.” He paused, then said, “You two have been through a lot. You know-” he shifted to nudge Skull gently, careful not to jostle him too much, “-I’ve been looking for you.”

“ _What_?” Skull said, squinting up at Teddy. “...Why?”

“Well, you’ve been missing, haven’t you?” Teddy smiled briefly at Skull’s unimpressed look, then continued with, “It’s kind of my job - I have to admit though, this sounds… much worse than I thought it might be.”

“...This is one of the cases you’ve been working on?” Harry asked. “The one you were visiting Italy for?” 

Teddy huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Of course you would go on vacation and somehow manage to get yourself wrapped up in this, Harry,” he said, sounding incredibly fond. “Only you.”

“I didn’t do this on _purpose_ ,” Harry said. 

“No, you never do. It’s part of what makes it so incredible, I suppose. Is this your place?” Teddy squinted up at the hotel. 

“Yeah,” Harry said, and they entered and crossed the lobby - Harry briefly eyed the stairs, then turned back to examine the woozy, pained expression on Skull’s face, and decided, _no, probably not_ , and turned to the elevator. Once on their proper floor, Harry hurried ahead of the two of them, fumbling with the keycard as he swiped it and pushed the door open - and froze.

There was a man in the room. 

He wore a red - well, Harry wasn’t sure what it was. Not a dress, but not a robe either - and his hair was black and long and pulled into a neat braid. He was turning to face Harry as the door opened, one hand that was holding a phone dropping down to his side as his eyes met Harry’s. 

A strange mixture of shock, relief, and concern flickered quickly across his face, before it was arranged back into a faintly pleasant, placid looking mask. “Skull,” he said, which explained some things but left others still unanswered - namely, what he was doing in their hotel room, and _why_.

Unfortunately, that was the only bit Harry understood - the rest of it was spoken in a rapid Italian that Harry struggled to follow. He knew enough to get by - he _had_ been visiting, and he had intended for his vacation to last much longer than it had - but he wasn’t fluent enough to understand _what_ , exactly, the other man was saying. Something about life? The color green? Harry was lost. 

“Er,” Harry said, interrupting the other man and eyeing him warily as he stepped closer. Harry’s grip on the doorknob tightened as he shifted backwards slightly. “Look, there’s something that we, uh, we probably need to talk about - you see, there’s been, _um_. Something happened, and--” There was a strange pressure building in the back of Harry’s head that had him tripping uncertainty over his words, half-distracted by the growing pain, by the niggling feeling of _familiarity_ he felt towards this absolute stranger. Something about his face, his clothing… Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on it. 

He heard Skull and Teddy’s footsteps stumble to a stop behind him, and he cut off his awkward fumbling, trailing to a stop as the man’s eyes flickered to them, then back to Harry, gaze evaluating. “Who are your friends?” He asked, this time in English - perhaps taking his cue from Harry. 

Harry opened his mouth to respond - he didn’t expect the hand on the collar of his shirt, yanking him backwards, Skull saying, panicked, “Teddy, we need to go, we need to go _right now_ -”

Harry was still gripping the doorknob as he was yanked backwards, and the door was slamming shut with him - until it was pulled from his grip, _wrenched_ open, and the man was bursting from the room, and Harry had a second to think, _how did he move that fast_ -

And then someone gripped his shoulder, and something else clasped around his hand, and the world let out a _crack_ and compressed into a small tube, and Harry couldn’t breath for a long, endless moment- 

Then they popped back out, and Harry had a moment to connect eyes with the man from the room, who had a firm grip on Harry’s hand, and his other hand wrapped around where Teddy was gripping onto Harry’s shoulder, his dark eyes wide with shock, and Harry heard Teddy curse, then yell, “ _Relashio_ ,” and the man - so familiar, like Harry had met him before, like a small part of him recognized him, _knew_ him, and _oh_ , Harry’s head felt like it was going to split open, slowly, painfully - was letting go and stumbling backwards, and with a sharp _crack_ the world compressed once more-

Harry stumbled away as the world resettled, and bent over, placing his hands on his knees, breathing unsteadily. His head was aching unpleasantly, feeling rather sore and tender, and distantly he could hear the sounds of someone puking, Teddy saying worriedly, “Are you guys alright - Skull? Harry?”

“Fine,” Harry said, turning to the both of them. Skull was bent over, looking utterly miserable as he upchucked the contents of his stomach onto the grass, and Teddy hovered behind him, face twisted in concern. Harry glanced around, taking stock of their surroundings - they were on a hill in the countryside, looking down on a village that was spread out below them. It was picturesque, Harry had to admit, with the night sky above, and the scattered lights in the town below…

Skull spat at the ground one last time, clearing his mouth of the residue of vomit, his face screwed in distaste as he wiped his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve and staggered upright unsteadily. He was shaking, Harry noted, and he took a step forward in concern, then realized he was mistaken - Skull wasn’t shaking with exertion, or nausea, or pain - his body shook with barely contained, _seething_ rage, his face contorted with the emotion. 

“Skull,” Harry said, carefully. “What _was_ that? What just happened?”

Skull was silent for a few moments, clearly struggling to get himself under control, until at last he rasped out, “Sorry. I overreacted.”

“You _overreacted_?”

“Yeah, I just…” Skull made a face, still trembling slightly. “I, um. I wasn’t expecting to see him. Any of them, actually. Not so soon. Especially since they’ve made it clear that--” Skull cut himself off abruptly, face crumpling slightly before it smoothed out. “...Sorry,” he offered again, quietly. 

“It’s…” Harry glanced at Teddy, who met his gaze silently, looking puzzled and thoughtful, and then looked back at Skull. “It’s fine. Are you alright?”

“Um. Yes,” Skull said, rather unconvincingly. Still, he was standing on his own, and blinking around at their surroundings curiously, so Harry deemed him well enough for now and turned to Teddy. 

“You okay?” 

Teddy offered Harry a weak smile, and ran a hand over his mouth and jaw. “Alright,” he said. “Didn’t mean to bring the other guy with us when we Apparated, though - left him in an alleyway in the middle of Madrid. Hopefully he isn’t splinched… I’m gonna have to do damage control on that, contact some people…” Teddy stared off into the distance and grimaced. “Alright. This has been a disaster - I’m taking the two of you home now. Hugo _definitely_ needs to check the both of you over, and we need to start figuring out how to fix this.” 

Teddy patted his pockets, then pulled out a small beaded bracelet.

“Everyone grab on,” he said, and Harry moved forward to do exactly that. “Apologies in advance, Skull. This might be a little uncomfortable.”

“What?” Skull said, already gripping the bracelet. 

“ _Mischief Managed_ ,” Teddy said, and the portkey activated. 

The world spun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was trying to kill me i swear to god. some notes:
> 
> 1\. THIS clown of an author actually did spend time trying to figure out what the proper name for w/e Fon usually wears is, only to not even use it bc i was like '...ok but would harry actually even know what this thing is called? i Think Not' so i think it is a Joke that one of the only things i actually look up i don't even PUT in the chapter. a joke! a jape! i have been deemed not a man but a fool, and have been sentenced down to the lowest level of hell to pay for the crime of my existence, the crime of having only one brain cell, 
> 
> (but also its called a changshan and its 👌👌👌👌. absolutely _impeccable_ , y'all) 
> 
> 2\. these dumbasses ended up leaving the duffel bag after all lol. skull left a couple things in there... but i'm sure THAT won't be relevant later
> 
> 3\. honestly this isnt really elaborating on anything but i personally found it hilarious to have harry talking to teddy while teddy was still assuming he was skull bc from teddys perspective that shit was probably confusing. imagine it: you come across the missing muggle dude you've been looking for & the first thing he says is a. your nickname and b. asks u about your dead dads greatest fear. all this happening while ur godfather lurks in the background looking like five seconds from passing out lmao. also? not really relevant either, but writing a metamorphmagus is fun. you can try to take teddy's blue hair from me but you'll have to kill me first. 
> 
> 4\. the harry and skull convo.... y'all there was so much at play here i wanted to bang my head against the wall while writing it haha. the frustration..... I Am Half-Sick Of Foreshadowing: a flavia de luce novel
> 
> 3\. my brain is so tired i can't see straight (haha). im DOUBTLESSLY forgetting shit lol. hmu in the comments if y'all have any questions and ill do my best to supply answers! next chapter is (thank GOD) finally gonna have some explanations n shit. 
> 
> speaking of next chapter! it might be delayed. this week was super rough on me, & it might not be getting better lol. i'll do my best, but i just wanted to warn y'all! 
> 
> & thank you to everyone who commented/left kudos/bookmarked, etc! seriously, every single one made me so incredibly happy, i appreciate all of you so much! thank you very much for taking the time to read this!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> playing fast n loose with canon AND fanon. y'all remember when i said this might get a little weird, right?
> 
> canvas, meet bucket. 

They landed outside Teddy and Victoire’s house, right in Victoire’s garden. Harry - in a rare, once in a blue moon occurrence - managed to keep his balance and didn’t topple over into a bush. Skull, next to him, wasn’t quite so lucky - he had face planted in one of Victoire’s well maintained greenery - small flowers of some kind, with soft purple petals that Skull spat out as he levered himself to his knees, looking distinctly queasy once more. 

Harry bent down to help him to his feet, while Teddy stowed the bracelet away and eyed the smushed flowers with a glum air. “Victoire isn’t going to be pleased with me,” he said, gingerly stepping away from the plant life he had crushed underfoot. 

“Is she home?” Harry asked, letting go of Skull and stepping back to eye the dark, unlit house. 

Teddy shook his head. “She’s visiting Dominique in France,” he said. “Left last week…” he seemed to want to add something to that, but he trailed off when Skull gagged and clasped a hand over his mouth. 

“...’M gonna be sick,” Skull mumbled, one arm curling around his stomach as he swayed on the spot. 

Teddy’s eyes went wide. “Not on the flowers!” He leapt forward and gently steered Skull out of the path of the hapless, squished flowers, leading him towards the grass, where Skull promptly bent over and vomited again. 

“Sorry,” Teddy said apologetically, as Skull wiped the back of his sleeve against his mouth. “Portkey travel can be disorienting.”

“You don’t say,” Skull croaked. 

Teddy snorted at that, then said, “Let’s get you inside. You might feel better after sitting down for a bit.”

* * *

Teddy and Victoire’s home was a relatively humble, comfortable abode - large enough to house them, their two children, and entertain guests, but small enough that it didn’t lose its homey, warm atmosphere. Walls and bookshelves were decorated with pictures of friends and family, and signs of life were easily sought out and found - various shoes piled by the front door, magazines and books left scattered over surfaces, a joke wand stuffed in the back cushions of an armchair and promptly forgotten about. 

Their home always smelt like flowers - this was supported in part by the numerous vases set around the house, always filled with healthy, lovely blossoms of all types - but Harry suspected that even if one removed them all, their scent would perfume the house for years to come. It had sunk into the walls, the floors, the furniture - becoming one with the house itself. Flowery perfume and earthy scents, like the first growth of spring - it was a deeply familiar, comforting smell. 

The front room was populated by a pair of comfortable couches and several squishy, overstuffed armchairs - all of which were set in a loose circle, in the middle of which was a coffee table, piled with books and magazines and letters. The rug underfoot was soft and well-worn, the windows in the room looking out into the dark yard they had just vacated. There were two doorways branching off from this room, set on opposite sides of the couch that rested against the far wall - one led down to the kitchen and the stairs that would bring them to the upper floor, and the other led to an assortment of rooms - Teddy’s office, a bathroom, a spare room that doubled as a guest room, a few closets… 

Skull dropped down on the couch against the far wall, facing the windows. He didn’t look as though he felt better upon sitting down - in fact, when sat down in proper lighting, he still looked to be in rather poor health, and even poorer mood. 

After ensuring that they would be alright for the time being, Teddy excused himself to head to his office and fire-call Hugo. Harry listened to his footsteps echo off the wood floor as he paced down the hall, the click and creak of his office door as it opened, then closed. 

“It’s so bright in here,” Skull complained, eyes screwed up in discomfort as he squinted at the lights, rubbing the back of his neck. 

Harry let out a huff of amusement, shrugging the backpack off and dropping it in an armchair as he perched on the arm of the couch next to Skull. “Don’t look at the lights,” he suggested. “That might help.”

Skull slanted his eyes over to Harry, his expression thoroughly unamused. Harry held up his hands and said, “Just a suggestion.”

“ _Hm_ ,” Skull said doubtfully, leaning forward to drop his head into his hands. After a moment, he let out an aggravated sigh and said, “Nope. Still too bright.”

Harry patted him on the shoulder in a commiserating sort of way. “Your headache?”

His own was (thankfully) fading already, though the niggling feeling that he was forgetting something still persisted. Whatever it was, he couldn’t quite grasp hold of it - and focusing on it for too long and having it continuously elude him frustrated him, and the frustration made the ache in his head flare up... so Harry just avoided thinking on it for too long. 

“I feel like I’m _dying_ ,” Skull announced dramatically, his voice muffled by his hands. “Your body was designed to torture me.” 

Harry felt his lips twitch upwards, and he forcibly corralled them into a straight line as Skull turned his head to peer inquisitively at Harry. “Do you normally get headaches like this?”

Harry took a moment to try and think back. “...When I was younger, I think.” he said. “There were, er. Extenuating circumstances, though.” 

“Extenuating circumstances…?”

Harry made a face and shook his head. “Let’s not get into that,” he said. There was no topic he was less eager to discuss at the moment than Voldemort. 

Skull looked curious but he didn't press, and they lapsed into silence. Minutes passed, and Skull eventually hunched over to rest his arms on his knees and fully bury his head in his arms, while Harry stared around the room, relief at being back in familiar surroundings washing over him. He picked a magazine off the coffee table and half-heartedly flicked through it - it was some sort of Herbology themed issue, and many of the pages had been scribbled on in Victoire’s neat cursive. She seemed to have taken offense with some of the information that had been printed, and in the margins of the magazine she was quite viciously taking the article writer to task. 

_Didn’t do any research!_ was written and underlined several times near the end of the article, and Harry couldn’t help the small amused smile that crept onto his face. He was willing to bet that both the magazine and the article writer had received a strongly worded letter on the quality of their product - perhaps more than one, if their responses hadn’t been satisfactory. 

A door down the hall creaked open, then closed, and both he and Skull perked up slightly, turning their heads to stare at the doorway. After several long moments, Hugo appeared. He looked tired (although this was not especially uncommon for Hugo) - his lime green robes were rumpled and disheveled, his hair messy and uncombed, his feet clad only in mismatching socks that clashed terribly with one another. He had a satchel slung over one shoulder, and a bit of soot streaked over his cheek. 

“Uh, wow,” he said, hesitating in the doorway as he examined the two of them. “Teddy wasn’t kidding about the two of you being rough off.”

Harry was flattered, really.

“Thanks, Hugo.” He said. 

“It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” Hugo said, shrugging. He came forward to set his satchel on the coffee table. “Teddy’s going to be a little busy for a while,” he said, rolling up the sleeves of his robes. “He’s talking to Mom and Dad right now, and he has a few more calls to make afterwards… he said something about accidentally Apparating with a muggle?” Hugo sounded lightly amused - there was a considerable chance Teddy had endured a bit of good natured ribbing for that, then. 

Harry’s heart jumped in his chest at the mention of Ron and Hermione, and he had the impulsive urge to follow along with it and jump up himself to head down to Teddy’s office to see them, to talk to them - Hugo seemed to sense this, and he cast Harry an unamused look. “Don’t think about running off,” he warned. “They’ll be over soon anyway - you can wait a few minutes, Uncle.” 

Harry subsided slightly, frowning at having been caught out. Satisfied with this, Hugo pointed at Skull and said, “You look absolutely miserable, so I’m going to start with you. Skull, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“It’s nice to meet you - I’m Hugo. Could you sit up for me? I’ll try and make this quick, I swear.”

* * *

True to his word, Hugo was quick. He did a diagnostic charm on Skull - non-invasive, Hugo assured him - and after asking a few more questions he deduced that Skull was most likely suffering from the aftershocks of a magical backlash, and, on top of that, he had a migraine. Hugo pulled out two potions - a Headache Reducer and a Calming Draught - explained their effects to Skull, and then had him drink them. 

“Give that a few minutes,” Hugo said, and then turned his attention to Harry. He followed the same procedure as before - diagnostic charm, followed by a few questions, and then he set about healing the cut on Harry’s face, and spent a few minutes working over the mess that was his wrist. 

Skull watched all of this with interested, curious eyes - Harry was relieved to note that he already looked much better - the lines of tension and pinched pain around his face and shoulders had loosened, alongside stress and worry that Harry hadn’t fully noticed until they had faded away, replaced with something much lighter. 

Hugo pulled his wand away from Harry’s wrist and turned it over gently, examining it. After a moment he let go and turned to rustle through his satchel, pulling out a few vials and a jar. 

“Dittany,” Hugo said, waving the jar around. “I healed all I could for your wrist, but some of the marks had already healed and scarred over,” he said, addressing Skull. “I’m assuming you don’t want scars - this will help with that.” Then, to Harry, while Skull pursed his lips but didn’t disagree, “You’ll want to apply this twice a day, to get the best results - this will help the scars fade faster.” 

Harry reached out and took the jar from him, turning it around in his hands. “And the others?” 

Hugo raised the other vials. “You and Skull are suffering the same kind of magical backlash,” he said. “I’m assuming it’s from what did this to you two. The Calming Draught will help with that, and the Pain Reducer will help with any residual pain. I would give a dose to you too,” Hugo said, addressing Skull once more, “but you said you took one already - it can be dangerous to double up on these.” 

Skull made a face at that, but didn’t object. Harry took the potions from Hugo and swallowed them down, screwing up his face at the taste. Hugo collected the empty vials from him and sat back on the coffee table with a sigh, pushing aside a stack of books to make room for himself. 

“All done,” he said, as he tucked his wand away and rolled his sleeves down. “Skull - if your head starts bothering you again, let me know. I’ll come back and check on the both of you after my shift, but otherwise, you should both be fine.” 

“Thanks Hugo,” Harry said, smiling at him. 

The sentiment was echoed by Skull a few moments later, and Hugo offered them a small smile. “It’s nothing,” he said, standing and slinging the satchel over his shoulder. “Anytime.” 

Down the hall, a door creaked open once more, and all three of their heads turned to stare at the doorway as familiar voices floated down the hall. 

“--grabbed the correct edition, right?”

“Yeah, the second one - dunno why you need it though, you have it practically memorized.” 

“It never hurts to be able to double-check your sources…” Hermione trailed off as she stopped in the doorway, her eyes flitting over the three of them grouped together by the couch. A smile broke over her face. “Harry!”

Harry brightened, and in a flash, he was on his feet and meeting Hermione halfway to envelope her in a hug she readily returned, burying her head in his shoulder and squeezing her arms tight around his middle. “It’s so good to see you,” Harry said, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. 

“You too,” Hermione said, voice muffled slightly. “Although you look a little different than you usually do.”

Harry laughed, pulling away after another quick squeeze. “Only a little?” 

“Maybe more than that,” Hermione conceded, still smiling as she tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear and moved to the side. Ron appeared in her place, wrapping Harry up in a hug that lifted him off his feet. Harry wheezed a little, and raised his arms to pat Ron on the back. 

“Can’t breathe,” Harry gasped out, and Ron set him back on his feet, patting him on the shoulder as Harry inhaled air gratefully. 

“Good to see you,” Ron said, hand moving from Harry’s shoulder to rustle his hair. “Love what you’ve done with the hair, mate.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. “It’s not mine.”

“Eh,” Ron said, tilting his head and squinting his eyes as he made a _so-so_ gesture with his hand. 

Harry grinned and socked him lightly on the shoulder, then turned back to Skull and Hugo. He paused when he found Skull clutching at his head and talking in low tones to a concerned looking Hugo, who had taken a seat next to Skull on the couch. 

“Is everything okay?” Harry asked, his smile fading. 

Hugo began to dig through his bag and seemed too distracted to reply, so Skull glanced up with a weak grin. “Yeah,” he said. “Just a headache.”

That set off alarm bells in Harry’s head - Skull shouldn’t be _having_ headaches right now, not after the potions he drank - and he stepped closer to hover next to Skull, chewing on the inside of his cheek, not knowing how to help and feeling utterly useless. 

“Er,” he began uncertainly, figuring that introductions might be a good place to start - they certainly couldn’t hurt, could they? “Skull, this is Ron and Hermione-” Ron gave a little wave, and Hermione smiled, “and Ron and ‘Mione, this is Skull.” 

Skull glanced towards where Ron and Hermione were standing and winced, just a little bit. “...It’s nice to meet you,” Skull said, sounding uncertain - about what, Harry wasn’t quite sure. 

Ron and Hermione echoed the sentiment, both hovering on the other side of the coffee table and watching the proceedings with worried and thoughtful expressions, respectively. 

A layer of awkwardness began to quickly descend on the room. Hugo was too distracted to offer more than a quick _hello_ to his parents, and Skull, who was beginning to look worse with every passing second, was certainly not in the mood for conversation. 

...It was a bit of a jarring feeling, to be able to step back and see himself sitting in front of his oldest friends - Harry, who looked to be barely twenty, set in a startling comparison to Ron and Hermione, who now looked to be several decades his senior. 

This wasn’t to say that Hermione and Ron were old - Harry steadfastly refused to think of them that way. It was a disconcerting experience, however, to finally see this from the perspective of a stranger - Hermione and Ron with their wrinkles, and their greying hair, their smile lines and crow’s feet, and Harry with his youthful exterior, his black hair without a hint of grey, no wrinkles or lines--

Suddenly, it was easy to place what Harry had felt all these years, as he watched his friends grow old, watched their sons and daughters too, grow older in a way Harry couldn’t. He felt frozen - as if he was stuck fast in some point in time, while all around him, the world marched on. He looked it, too - untouched by the sands of time in a way no one around him was. There was a subtle, yet decisive divide between him and his friends, the kind that made his chest ache with a pain Harry couldn’t quite name. 

Swallowing, Harry was quick to shut down that train of thought. Now was no time to be maudlin, and glancing between his best friends and Skull had finally reminded Harry of something that had been forgotten in the commotion of earlier - his and Skull’s conversation by the bookshop. 

_Hermione would probably like one of these, wouldn’t she?_

The icy feeling from before didn't return - Harry felt much more centered now, much less stressed and concerned. Instead, he felt a nagging curiousity - how _had_ Skull known Hermione’s name? The way he mentioned her was suggestive of familiarity as well, though Harry was certain they had never met before. He wrestled with himself internally - though his curiosity and interest were urging him to question Skull now, to try and figure out what was going on, Skull certainly wasn’t in any condition to give answers. 

A hand on his elbow startled Harry out of his thoughts, and he glanced to his side to find Ron standing there. “We’re not going to be much help here,” he said, tilting his head towards Hugo and Skull. “Let’s leave them alone - we can head to the kitchen, and you can catch us up on a few things.”

Harry’s first instinct was to protest - the thought of separation was a surprisingly painful one, considering how short a time he and Skull had known each other. The mere suggestion had his chest twinging painfully, had his body tensing in trepidation. 

Then again, Harry thought, as he forced himself to relax and take a steady, calming breath, maybe it wasn’t quite so shocking - there were certain things you couldn’t go through with someone without bonding with them in some way. This whole experience just happened to be one of those things, Harry supposed. 

He forced himself to nod at Ron. There were things he needed to talk about with him and Hermione, anyway - and for some of them, it might be for the best that Skull wasn’t there. 

“Skull,” he said, and Skull’s eyes flickered over to Harry. Harry jerked his head towards the kitchen, and said, “We’ll just be in the kitchen, if you need anything. It’s just over there, down that hall.”

Skull blinked, a flicker of unease crossing his face, and then he nodded hesitantly. Hugo waved his hand in a silent acknowledgement as Ron gently shepherded Harry towards the kitchen, and with one last backwards glance, Harry snagged his backpack and allowed Ron and Hermione to lead him towards the kitchen, where they all took seats around the table - Hermione and Ron on one side, Harry on the other. 

“...I suppose you know most of what happened?” Harry asked, settling in and bouncing his leg up and down. He was feeling unusually jittery - he half wondered if maybe the Calming Draught had worn off already. 

“Teddy filled us in on a lot of it,” Hermione said, folding her arms atop the table and leaning forward slightly. “But I don’t think we got the whole story.”

Harry took the gentle prompting for what it was, and launched into an explanation of everything that had occurred from the moment he had awoken in that tiny basement room up until now. He hesitated over his and Skull's talk in the courtyard, yet again, and then decided to breeze over certain parts of the conversation - guilt twisted his stomach, but he rationalized it by telling himself that the information couldn't be all that helpful in regards to figuring out how to fix the whole _‘whoops, got stuck in the wrong body’_ situation. Besides - once Harry managed to get Skull to actually talk about it, he could just let them know then. There wasn't anything to worry about, really - there would be time to get to it later. 

Other than a request to see the bracelet - which Harry complied with, and both Ron and Hermione spent several minutes looking it over - they didn’t interrupt him as he talked, though they both looked sorely tempted at times. 

Harry’s voice trailed off as he reached the end of his tale, and he leaned back in his chair, feeling thoroughly spent from all the talking he had been doing. 

Ron blew out a breath. “You have the _worst_ luck,” he said. “How do you always end up in the thick of things?”

“ _Luck_ ,” Harry deadpanned. “I’ve honed it throughout the years, can’t you tell?”

“Well you _must’ve_ \--”

“Harry,” Hermione interrupted him, leaning even further over the table, her tone urgent. “Are you sure you don’t have magic? Do you know for certain?” 

Harry blinked, briefly taken aback. “Well,” he said. “I haven’t… tried a spell, exactly. I just assumed - the Repelling Charms worked on me, ‘Mione.” 

“Try a spell now, Harry,” she urged. “Please.” 

Harry drew his wand from his waistband with barely steady hands, anxiety thrumming through his veins. Now was the moment of truth - he attempted a simple color changing charm on the tablecloth, trying to change it from its clean white to a deep red. 

Nothing happened. 

Absolutely nothing - Harry didn’t feel anything. The bracelet didn’t heat up, there wasn’t any pain, no familiar sensation of magic rushing through him - nothing. 

“It didn’t work,” Harry said, barely aware that he was speaking. A numbness settled itself over him, a dreadful splash of icy cold followed by a complete lack of sensation, of feeling. 

Hermione blanched and sat back. “Nothing?” She asked, voice small. “You didn’t feel anything? Not even--”

“ _No_ ,” Harry said sharply, and he dropped his wand on the table and dragged a hand down his face. “What was the point of that, Hermione?” He asked, trying to keep his slowly rising temper at bay - none of this situation was her fault, after all. 

Hermione took a deep breath, chewing on her bottom lip as she stared off into space for a moment, appearing to be attempting to organize her thoughts a little bit. 

“This… this whole situation might be more complicated than we first thought, Harry,” she started. “I - well. How much do you know about magic?”

Harry frowned slightly. “The usual stuff,” he said. “Magical cores, spellcasting, things like that.” He tilted his head slightly to the side in puzzlement. “Isn’t that most of it?” 

From the look on Hermione’s face, the answer to that was _no_. “Not exactly,” she said. “That’s a great deal, yes, but I was mostly talking about… well…” she glanced to Ron, who was looking a little grim, and then back at Harry. “I’ve been doing some research into it. Magic, that is. It’s very interesting, actually, all the theories on where it came from, where we came from - and surprisingly hard to dig into. You wouldn’t _believe_ how hard I had to search to find books on the subject, and most of them are really old and the only copies of them are in the personal libraries of pureblood families, so getting my hands on them was a _nightmare_ ,” Hermione rambled, not seeming to breathe. “And--”

“Getting a little off track,” Ron said fondly, reaching out to drape an arm over the back of Hermione’s chair. “Relax, Hermione.”

Hermione paused, then shook her head, clearing it. “Right,” she said, casting Ron a grateful smile. “Well, anyway, I was looking into it because, well-” she hesitated, darting a quick glance at Harry, “-I thought maybe it could help you with, er. Your little problem, so to speak.”

Ah. 

“Okay,” Harry said, his curiosity rising. “Magical theory? What does that have to do with this?”

“It’s not just magical theory,” Hermione said. “Or - it technically is, I suppose. It doesn’t matter. Admittedly, though, when I first looked into it I was _very_ surprised that all this information wasn’t that well-known - I suppose that’s what you get though, when you have people hoarding knowledge to themselves, not sharing it with the general public--”

“‘Mione,” Ron said, gently nudging her away from the rant she seemed fully geared up to deliver. 

“...Right. Well. Harry, have you ever heard of ambient magic receptors?” 

“No…?”

Hermione looked as though she had expected this answer, and she sat up straighter in her seat, meeting Harry’s gaze squarely. “Our magic isn’t the only thing that separates us from muggles,” she said. “There’s a reason Squibs aren’t considered muggles, after all, even though they themselves don’t have magic. _That_ reason is ambient magic receptors.” She drummed her fingers against the table, her eyes lighting up in that familiar way that meant she was beginning to warm up to a subject. “Ambient magic is all around us - we’re absorbing and processing it all the time. It’s what helps us build our active magic when we’re younger, before our magical core stabilizes.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “And muggles don’t have these... er… ambient magic receptors?”

“Exactly,” Hermione said. “It’s the reason most of the charms and wards targeting them work.” She paused, chewing on the bottom of her lip as she thought, and then after a moment, she said, “Look - it’s a complicated subject - I’ve barely begun to dig into it myself… but try to think of it like this.” She folded her hands together on the table and took a deep breath. 

“When wizards use their active magic - the magic from their magical cores - and cast a spell, putting magic out into the world - that magical energy has to go somewhere, right? It does. It gets absorbed into the ambient magic - you’ll notice that in places where more magic is typically cast over long periods of time, like Hogwarts - places like those become positively _saturated_ with ambient magic. It’s why it’s so hard to bring electronics anywhere near Hogwarts - there’s simply too much magic concentrated in that area for it to work.

“Ambient magic is also what helps feed and sustain our wards and protections, to keep them active - no wizard could power any of them alone. This is also what helps us stay hidden - because, like I’ve said, muggles can’t sense ambient magic. They’re blind to it.”

She drew her wand from her pocket and began to draw a stick figure in the air, illuminated by golden lines. “It’s like this,” she said. “Imagine that ambient magic is a wavelength - like a radio signal of sorts. It’s invisible. For magical folk, it’s also intangible. It passes through us without affecting us because we’re on the same wavelength.”

She drew a similarly golden line that passed harmlessly through the stick figure, then drew another stick figure below that one, this time in shimmering silver. “For muggles - they don’t pick up on the signal. The wave crashes into them. An unstoppable force.” She drew a gold line colliding roughly with the silver stick figure, crashing into it and encircling it. “Because the concentrated, focused ambient magic can’t go _through_ them, it _pushes_ them around instead. We’ve used this to our advantage, obviously.”

“So if I’m in the body of a muggle,” Harry said, “Of course I would be affected by the Repelling Charms, because Skull wouldn’t have any, uh, ambient magic receptors. But you asked me to try and cast a spell because…” He sat up straighter, realization flooding through him. “There was still a chance I would have my magical core?”

“Yes,” Hermone confirmed, nodding. Next to her, Harry caught Ron grimacing slightly. “But,” she continued, “you don’t... you don't seem to have it, which… complicates things a little bit.” She waved her wand through the drawings, erasing them, her voice now a little hesitant. “You see, Harry, in all the research I’ve done - well, there was a reason I decided to look into magic in the first place, a reason I thought it might help you… there was this study done on some of the victims of a Dementor’s Kiss, to see - well, it doesn’t really matter right now. But the study got me interested because there were some who came to the conclusion afterwards that our magic could, in some way, be connected to our souls.

“And that reminded me of when we discovered you couldn’t talk to snakes anymore, Harry. Do you remember that? I was curious about it when we first found out, but there was just so much going on, it slipped my mind for a long time…”

“I remember,” Harry said. He hadn’t really questioned it at the time - too relieved to finally be free of another connection to Voldemort, and there _had_ been a lot going on, after the end of the war… but clearly Hermione hadn’t let it slide. 

“Right, well. The reason you were able to speak to snakes in the first place, Harry…” and Hermione hesitated here for a moment, “...is because you were a horcrux. Some of Voldemort’s magical abilities transferred to you when a piece of his soul did. When the piece of his soul was destroyed, so were the magical abilities.”

A muted sense of dread rolled very slowly over Harry. The world seemed to be very far away, distant - as though Harry was peering at it through a very thick sheet of glass. He understood Hermione’s hesitance, now. Harry almost wished he _didn’t_ understand. “...Some of Voldemort’s magical abilities transferred to me,” Harry said quietly, picking up where Hermione left off, “because a piece of his soul did, and magic is connected to the soul.”

Hermione nodded, swallowing, and next to her, Ron’s face was tense, his freckles standing out starkly on his paling skin. “And so the only reason I wouldn’t have access to any part of my magic right now,” Harry continued, his voice remarkably calm and even, no hint in it of the subdued tremor he felt under his skin. “Is because I wouldn’t have any. Because the ritual did something that messed up that part of my soul.” 

He remembered the night of the ritual - feeling like he was being torn apart, ripped to pieces, like parts of himself were being clawed away, leaving gaping holes Harry tried desperately to fill--

His hands were beginning to shake, and he clenched them tightly around the arms of his chair. 

“Hermione,” he said, his voice still eerily calm - something to do with the influence of the Calming Draught, no doubt. Harry would probably be reacting much worse right now, without it. “Please tell me there’s a way to fix this.” 

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it, swallowing. After a long moment, where Harry’s stomach dropped straight through the floor, she lifted her chin, setting her jaw in that familiar, stubborn way. “If we can’t find a way,” she said fiercely, “We’ll _make_ one. We’ll fix this, Harry. No matter what.”

“Yeah,” Ron said, leaning forward over the table, his tone low and comforting. “All this means is that things are a little more complicated than we thought they were, like Hermione said. We can deal with complicated - we have before, haven't we? We can fix this.” 

He believed them. 

Harry blew out a long breath, and scrubbed his shaky hands over his face. “We can deal with complicated,” Harry repeated, trying to ground himself. His current calm was a precarious thing - he teetered on the edge, very close to toppling over. Seconds ticked by in silence, and Harry could just hear snatches of murmurs coming from the direction of the front room - if he tried to focus long enough, he could probably pick out the individual tones of Hugo and Skull - but he didn't try, just letting it blend together and wash over him, using it to ground himself.

“...You know, if you think about it,” Ron said thoughtfully, as Harry took a few moments to breath, “This helps explain what you said about Skull mentioning Hermione - if the ritual managed to mess up your magic, some other things probably got scrambled around in there as well, don’t you think?”

“What, like memories?” Harry said, uncovering his face and dropping his elbows to rest on the table, leaning forward slightly. “You think that got mixed up, too?”

“I don’t see why not,” Ron said, which was a fair point. “Have _you_ remembered anything? You said you ran into someone Skull knew - did anything, I dunno… jump out at you?”

Harry shrugged. “He seemed familiar,” he said. “But doesn’t necessarily mean anything, does it?” It wasn’t as though Harry had experienced some great realization staring down the strange man in their hotel room - he didn’t know his name, didn’t know who he was. All he had was that strange familiarity, the strange insistence that he _knew_ that man _somehow_. 

“No, guess not…” Ron propped his head up against his hand and stared across the room consideringly. “Maybe it’s not an equal exchange?”

“Maybe,” Harry said. “We’ll probably be able to get a better idea of what’s happening here if we talk to Skull about it, though.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Ron said, rueful. “We’ll put that on hold for now, then.”

“In the meantime,” Hermione said, tapping her wand against the table thoughtfully. “Do you mind pulling out those notebooks you mentioned? The ones in the backpack? I’d like to take a look at them.”

“Sure,” Harry said. “Hold on.”

He bent to rustle through the backpack, pulling out notebook after notebook and setting them on the table. There were six in total, all of varying sizes and thickness, and after a moment of examination, Hermione pulled them towards her. She went through the pile, tapping her wand against each book, checking to make sure that they weren’t warded or cursed.

After a few minutes she set the last one aside and said, “They’re all clear.” 

Ron and Harry each pulled one towards themselves and flipped them open curiously, while Hermione flicked through the pages of her chosen book, her eyes darting back and forth as she inspected it. 

Harry’s notebook was filled with equations - equations and hastily scribbled formations of runes, little notes in the margins that pointed to various sections with arrows, noting down a correction, or a substitution, or little reminders. The handwriting was a very neat print - no ink drops or splatters to be found, the pages kept in pristine condition. Harry tilted his head as he examined them, flipping through the pages faster. Equation after equation, through Harry didn’t have a clue what they were calculating, or what they might be for. 

“Honestly,” Hermione said conversationally, as she flipped through her own notebook at a much slower pace, pausing every now and then to appraise something with a raised eyebrow before continuing forward, “this whole situation is just more proof that necromancy never works.”

Both Harry and Ron choked. “ _Necromancy_?” They said at the same time, looking up to pin Hermione with bewildered stares. 

Hermione glanced up at them, a smile creeping onto her face, lighting it up in amusement. “Yes,” she said. “Necromancy. The ritual you described, the effect it had on you and Skull… it sounds a lot like it.”

“...So maybe you do please elaborate,” Ron said, abandoning his notebook to prop his head up against his hand as he stared questioningly at Hermione. 

Hermione returned her attention to the notebook she was studying, the corner of her lips still twitching upwards. “Necromancy,” she said, sounding as though she was reciting an entry from a book. “The manipulation of souls. By the definition, Soul Magic is inherently a form of necromancy.”

Harry considered this as he returned his gaze to the book and flipped to the end, lingering on the last page, eyes caught on a few scribbles - normal ones, this time, the type a bored student might doodle in their notebook during class. “...In that case, I’m assuming that this might be a different branch of necromancy than Inferi, right?” he asked. “Considering they don’t have souls.”

There was a large heart doodled in the upper right of the page, two initials inscribed inside it in handwriting that was much messier than the neat type that dominated the rest of the notebook. 

_E.B + H.S._ , it read. 

Underneath it, underlined several times, the neat handwriting scrawled out, _STOP SCRIBBLING IN MY BOOK._

In defiance of that, several other hearts were doodled around the command.

“It is,” Hermione confirmed. “Animation of the dead, such as Inferi, is one branch, and Soul Magic is another. Although-” and here she looked up and quirked a small smile, “-Inferi originally started out as an attempt to manipulate the souls of the dead and bring them back to life. The branches intermix more often than not.”

“The whole Inferi thing didn’t exactly work out then, did it?” Ron pointed out bemusedly, his chair scraping against the floor as he stood, stretched, then ambled over to the stove to put the kettle on. 

Hermione sniffed. “Like I said. Necromancy never works.”

Harry snorted at that, then, after staring at the other doodles on the page for a long moment - more hearts, a few stars and smiley faces and stick figures. _You and me_ , Messy Handwriting had written, with an arrow pointing to two stick figures who were holding hands and beaming up at Harry with toothy grins. _Stop being obnoxious_ , Neat Handwriting had written back - he closed the book. 

There was a quiet knock on the doorway, and all of their heads swiveled to look towards it - Hugo was leaning against the door frame, a tired, reserved smile on his face. Harry looked beyond him, trying to see if Skull was hovering somewhere over his shoulder, but he didn’t see anything. He refocused on Hugo. 

“Is everything okay?”

Hugo nodded. “I just wanted to catch you all before I left,” he said. “My shift starts in an hour. Skull’s asleep right now. I managed to convince him to take a Sleeping Draught - he was really reluctant, but I think the pain got to be too much for him, the poor guy…” Hugo trailed off with a frown, but then shook his head and refocused. “I’m going to poke around at work, see if I can find anything similar to what he’s experiencing right now - I think it has something to do with whatever magical ritual Teddy told me you two were involved in--”

“About that,” Harry interrupted him, and Hugo quieted and raised his eyebrows questioningly. “You’re probably right. Well - from what we figure, at least.”

With Ron and Hermione jumping in to help him explain, Harry told Hugo about their theory with his and Skull’s memories. Hugo listened intently, his frown deepening. 

“So it's possible that memories are being triggered,” Hugo theorized, scratching at his chin. “And that’s the cause of the headaches. That… explains some things.” He waved off their questioning looks. “Skull was saying a bunch of stuff earlier,” he said. “More importantly - if the memories are being triggered by his surroundings, or by _us_ , even - that’s not so good, considering where he is. You have a lot of memories wrapped up here, Uncle.” 

Hugo tapped a socked foot against the floor, frowning off into the distance. “I wonder if something could be done to reduce the flow of memories?” He said, clearly just thinking out loud. “It doesn’t seem to be full on memory recollection yet though, I don't think - associations of some sort, maybe...? Or if we can't stop that, maybe we could reduce the pain that comes along with it…” he trailed off, then pushed himself away from the door frame and began to pace around the kitchen. 

“Maybe there’s a block of some sort,” he said. “That would help explain the pain, although… _hm_...” Hugo trailed off again and slowed to a stop in the middle of the room. “...I’ll look into this at work,” he said, turning to face Harry. “Thank you for letting me know about it.” He hesitated, then added, “Although - if this does have to do with the mind, with memories… I’m not a mind healer, Uncle. I would feel much more comfortable if we brought someone else in to help with this.”

Harry frowned, then said, “...I’ll think about it.” Hugo had a good point - Harry just wasn’t entirely comfortable with the thought of someone digging around in his head. He was willing to bet Skull wouldn’t be all that overjoyed about it, either. 

“All I can ask for,” Hugo said, and he glanced over at the clock hanging on the wall and blanched. “Oh _shit_ , I’ve got to get to work,” he said, darting over to press a quick kiss to Hermione’s cheek.

“Language,” Ron said automatically. 

“Sorry, dad,” Hugo said, hurrying over to give Harry and Ron a quick hug. “I’ve left some potions in the front room, Uncle - just in case the headache hasn’t passed when Skull wakes up. Alternate between the Pain Relievers and the Headache Reducers, give it three hours between doses - don’t take both at the same time, and _don’t_ double up on the Pain Relievers. Get some food and water into the both of you - I’ll be back after my shift to give a check up, but if you need anything, don’t hesitate to contact me, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry said. “Thank you again, Hugo - you’ve done a lot for us.”

Hugo waved him off. “Anytime,” he repeated once more, and then he was rushing out the doorway and down the hall. 

“Don’t forget to grab some shoes!” Hermione yelled after him. 

“I’ll just take Teddy’s!” Hugo yelled back, and seconds later a door opened and shut loudly. Teddy’s office door, presumably. 

The house fell back into silence. Ron walked back over to the table and set a cup of tea in front of Hermione, to the side of the notebook she was studying. She patted his hand in thanks, then went back to the notebook. “Want a cup?” Ron asked Harry.

Harry shook his head, and Ron shrugged and went back to pour himself one. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, Hermione pulling more notebooks towards her and flipping them open, arranging them around her in a semi-circle. 

Harry found himself tapping his fingers on the table, glancing around the kitchen, trying to find something to distract himself from the jittery feeling in his chest that had resurfaced with a vengeance. He couldn’t fully concentrate on anything, his mind jumping around from place to place too quickly to even try. The kitchen felt so stifling, now - he felt like pacing, like standing up and walking out, or, in lieu of that, doing something - i>anything - to take his mind off how his hands were beginning to shake, ever so slightly, or how his chest throbbed, twisting inside him insistently. He needed to get out of here. He needed--

“Hey,” he said suddenly, aware of Ron and Hermione’s attention turning towards him. “Is it alright if I go check on Skull?”

“...Yeah,” Ron said, sounding slightly confused. “Of course.”

Hermione was examining Harry, her eyes narrowed in assessment, but all she said was, “You don’t need to ask us, Harry. I was about to suggest you go get some rest, anyway. You’ve had a long day.”

“I’ll come back to help with this,” Harry insisted, his chair scraping against the floor as he pushed it back and stood. “I just…” he trailed off, and shrugged helplessly. 

“No, Hermione’s right,” Ron said. “You should get some rest - we’ll look through these for now, try to figure out if there’s anything useful here.” He leaned forward, catching hold of Harry’s hand and giving it a quick, comforting squeeze before letting go. “Go rest, Harry. We’ve got it from here.”

Harry didn’t bother arguing - he gave them both a grateful smile, then slid the chair back in and exited the kitchen, walking down the hall towards the front room. He found Skull curled up on the couch, a pillow tucked under his head and a blanket draped over him. He was sleeping, although it didn’t seem to be entirely peaceful - his face was tense, and he twitched sporadically, his eyes shifting around under his closed lids. 

Harry let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and walked over to sit at the foot of the couch, slumping back against it. He listened to Skull’s steady breaths, and let his head tilt back until it rested against the seat cushion and he was blinking up at the ceiling. 

His mind was blank - after everything that had happened in the past day, the recent discussion he had with Ron and Hermione, he felt wrung out. Numb, tired. Too tired to even try to contemplate anything. His magic, his soul, the memories Skull was potentially struggling with - all of that faded from his tired mind, and he spent a few blissful moments staring up at the ceiling, thinking absolutely nothing at all. The jittery, nervous feeling that had been enveloping him was fading rapidly, the ache in his chest abated entirely. 

Harry could hear clinking and shuffling from the kitchen, the quiet murmur of indiscernible conversation, the reassuring creaks and groans of the house settling around them. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but eventually he became aware of the heaviness of his eyelids, how much of a struggle it was becoming to keep his eyes open. It only took a moment - a split second to think, _well, it couldn’t hurt to rest my eyes a moment longer_ \- and between one blink and the next, Harry slid into darkness.

* * *

_The cool lake water lapped at his ankles, and he half-heartedly kicked out, splashing it around. The morning air was chilly, the sky above overcast. It was a grim, gloomy morning, quite befitting of his current mood._

_“Give it time,” a calm voice said from behind him._

_“It’s been **thirty** years,” he said, kicking out again, a little sullenly. “More than that, even! How much time could he need?”_

_“...How much time do you need?”_

_It was a gentle inquiry, but he heard the unspoken rebuke in it._

_He fell silent, his jaw working back and forth in quiet consternation. He knew he was being unfair - a petulant, hurt child. This was hard for all of them. Of course it was._

_“I’m being difficult again, aren’t I?” He asked, voice nearly inaudible over the sound of the rippling water. There was a quiet fear behind that he didn’t dare voice, didn’t quite allow himself to think about - it festered in the back of his mind nonetheless. How long until he became too difficult? How long until he was too much effort, how long until they got sick of it, how long until they decided it wasn’t worth it?_

_“Not at all. Reborn was also out of line.”_

_There was a moment of silence as soft footsteps sounded on the slippery, pebbled beach behind him, the water rippling as another pair of feet waded in._

_A hand on his shoulder, the heat from it sinking through his thin shirt, warming the chilled skin underneath. “Come back.”_

_He turned his head, meeting familiar dark eyes, and opened his mouth to reply--_

“Harry.”

He was being shaken awake. 

“C’mon, Harry. You shouldn’t sleep on the ground like this. It’s bad for your back.”

Harry opened his bleary eyes and was met with the tired, amused face of Teddy, was was crouched down by the foot of the couch, hovering over Harry, who appeared to have fallen asleep and slumped down the couch to curl on the floor. 

“We’ve made up the guest rooms, if you want to sleep there instead,” Teddy said quietly. Harry sat up slowly, glancing at Skull, who was still deep in sleep. 

Somehow, the guest rooms seemed too far.

Harry pointed to the other couch. “S’alright,” he said, speech slurred by sleep. “I’ll be good out here.”

Teddy helped him to his feet, and Harry staggered over to the other couch and laid down. Early morning sunlight streamed in through the windows, beaming onto the floor, illuminating and glinting off the dust motes that floated peacefully through the air. Teddy saw where his gaze fell, and with a small wave of his wand, the curtains closed with a _snap_ , dimming the room into a pleasant, hazy darkness.

“Go back to sleep,” Teddy whispered, having somehow produced a pillow and blanket, urging Harry’s head up to stuff the pillow under it, and tucking the blanket over him. “It’s been a long day. You need the rest.”

“Mm,” Harry said, already halfway unconscious. The details of his dream niggled at him - it had felt so real. The cold air on his skin, the water at his ankles, the smooth pebbles under his bare feet, those eyes - and that conversation. _Reborn_ , he thought. It was a ridiculous name, but something about it struck a chord… 

He drifted off. 

His dreams were strangely Hufflepuff-themed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i say last chapter was trying to kill me? clearly, i was mistaken. last chapter was but a _warning_. THIS chapter was the dastardly attempt on my life. 
> 
> some notes:
> 
> 1\. so you might be looking @ the whole ambient magic thing and going 'was this really necessary?'. shockingly, the answer is yes, haha. when i was planning for this fic i spent a while scratching my head over how exactly i wanted to mesh these two worlds together - this is... part of that, in a way. honestly, im not sure how much of it i can talk abt here bc it's going to come up again later, but if you have any questions about it i'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability :) 
> 
> 2\. the whole 'harry can't speak to snakes after the horcrux in him was destroyed' bit is actually canon, i think. normally it's a part of canon i ignore (because i want harry to speak to snakes, dammit!!!) but here it worked to my benefit so i was like, 'eh. sure.'
> 
> 3\. soul magic in hp is so INTERESTING to me. it seems to be a fairly small branch of magic, but it has a lot of impact on the series. (horcruxes, dementors, etc). so like, when i figured i could do one of my favorite tropes (body swap!!) alongside this exploration of it i was so thrilled, haha. 
> 
> 4\. y'all i made the _worst_ joke this chapter - idk if any of y'all caught it (might have to wait till next chapter for it to make sense lmao) but it is quite possibly the worst-quality joke i have ever made, and boy THAT says a lot. ....i keep looking it over and laughing to myself. it's so bad.... do my shitty jokes count as foreshadowing? 
> 
> and again - thank you thank you thank you to everyone who left comments/kudos/bookmarked, etc!!! thank you so much for taking the time to read this, all of you - y'all are _amazing_ ❤️ i can’t stress how much i appreciate y’all, honestly.
> 
> (also... life is being.... life.... and while ive been doing my best to update this fic within a week of the latest chapter, that might not be possible for the foreseeable future, haha. i’ll do my best, but i wanted to give y’all a fair warning that future updates might continue to be delayed!)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *stumbles in several months late, looking extremely frazzled, with a half empty mocha freeze clutched in one hand*
> 
> sorry about how overdue this chapter is. in my defense, my brain was conspiring against me. 
> 
> also! my cousin's dog chewed through my laptop charger in no less than four (4) different places (don't worry! the dog is ok, the charger wasn't plugged into anything at the time) so i had to write 80% of this chapter on my phone, which was, quite frankly, a cruel and unusual punishment. so, if u see any mistakes, please blame both my phone & my thumbs which r too big for tiny keyboards. (also feel free to point them out to me so i can correct them, lmao)
> 
> this chapter is dedicated to [redacted] for being so kind as to allow me to borrow her notepad. your help was invaluable & i love you very much. please stop stealing my socks.
> 
> (also yes, the summary changed again. did i mention that im an indecisive bastard?)

Breakfast in the afternoon would normally be a luxury - something to indulge in after a relaxing morning lie-in. 

Nothing about this breakfast felt particularly indulgent or relaxing. 

Maybe it was the strangeness of experiencing it in someone else’s body, or the restless sleep filled with confusing, tiring, half-remembered dreams. Or, perhaps, it had less to do with sleep or dreams or the matter of the body-swap - perhaps, instead, it had entirely to do with spending the entirety of breakfast explaining their slightly-worse-than-anticipated situation to a tired, slightly overwhelmed, not-quite-muggle. 

As the conversation trudged tenaciously onward, Harry poked at his half-finished plate of food, flicking his eyes over to glance at Skull, then looking away, sympathy welling up in him at the sight of the poorly concealed anxiety and confusion held in the tense line of his body, in the spread of his face. 

“...understand that it’s a lot to take in,” Harry caught Ron saying, he tuned himself back in after another poke at his eggs. “If you want some time to think about it…”

Skull took a deep breath, and his hand, which had been clenched tightly around his fork, loosened and dropped in on the table with a small _thud_. “Um,” he said, forcing a smile that was deeply uncomfortable to look at. “That sounds good. I’m just gonna need a few minutes to, um. Digest everything.” 

“Of course,” Hermione said, kindly, not looking very surprised. 

Harry watched as Skull mumbled something about fresh air and beat a hasty retreat out of the kitchen. “Maybe I should go keep him company,” he said. 

“I don’t know,” Ron said, rubbing at his eyes and biting back a yawn. “He might need some space.”

Harry tapped his fingers against the table. “Maybe,” he conceded, after a moment, chest tight. “I just get the feeling that he shouldn’t be alone.”

Quiet crept into the room for a few thoughtful seconds. At last, Hermione cleared her throat and reached up to release her hair from its bun with deft fingers, letting her curls tumble down her shoulders with a sigh of relief. “Well,” she said, massaging her fingers into her scalp, elbows resting atop the table as she slumped forward. “You would know him better than us, I suppose.”

Harry shrugged. “Not by much,” he said, standing. “Thanks for breakfast, guys.”

* * *

Skull was easy to find. He hadn’t gone far, having apparently decided to sprawl outside on the ground and stare up at the sky with an expression of deep consternation. Skull sighed, just a little bit, when Harry settled himself into the grass next to him, which Harry decided not to take personally. 

Skull turned his head to squint at Harry. “Could we not talk?” He asked. “Just for a little bit?”

“We don’t have to talk at all,” Harry said. 

“...Isn’t that why you followed me out here?”

Harry shrugged. “I just wanted to keep you company,” he said. A short pause, while Skull’s face flickered through a variety of emotions too fast for Harry to identify, and then, “I, er. If you want me to go, though—”

“No,” Skull blurted out, and then looked vaguely embarrassed as his gaze darted around, unable to look Harry in the eyes. “I, um. You can stay.”

Harry ducked his head. “Alright,” he said, and then tugged up a handful of grass, examining the blades with far more interest than they deserved. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Skull peer at him for a moment longer, before relaxing back into the grass, eyes slipping closed as he let out a relieved sigh, fingers curling and uncurling from where they were flung out wide against the ground. Harry pretended to be enamored with the grass clutched in his hand for a few seconds longer, then tossed his handful to the side and flopped back against the ground as well. 

It was a cloudy day, the sky above heavy and thick with the promise of rain. He could smell it in the air, too - the sort of sharp sweetness and dull earthiness that arrived before the deluge. There was a slight chill to the air that felt pleasant against Harry’s skin, and the grass was wonderfully soft under him. He wondered, vaguely, if Victoire had done anything to it - it certainly didn’t _seem_ natural, and he wouldn’t put it past his niece to experiment in such a way. 

Harry let that thought chase itself around in his mind until it fizzled out from disinterest. Minutes ticked by, interrupted only by soft gusts of wind and the occasional chirp of a bird, or squeak from a squirrel. Harry’s mind, finally free of distraction, began to wander. 

Despite best efforts, there were things he couldn’t quite forget. 

The memories could fade - dulled and blurred by time, worn thin and smooth by obsessive tendencies, blunted and fogged over by trauma - but never entirely slip away. 

The sound of his mother screaming, her begging and pleading for his life, for mercy. That high pitched, cold laugh that still woke him in the middle of the night, jittery and paranoid. The year on the run, the war, moments from his years at Hogwarts, and even before that - when all he knew was life with the Dursleys. 

So, yes, Harry’s life was filled with things he would prefer to not look back on - among them, his years as a Horcrux. 

It was unfortunate, then, that at this moment it seemed he was helpless to contemplate anything else. 

He had tried, of course, to tear his mind away from the unpleasant track it was meandering down - and perhaps on a better day, he would have succeeded, if it weren’t for, well—

The _dreams_. 

Harry’s mind kept drifting back to them insistently, running through them again and again, images and sounds flashing in the back of his mind on repeat. Colors and people and murmured words and shouts, blurred and layered over one another, blended together stubbornly, even as Harry tried to delicately pick them apart, to peel them away from one another and make sense of the incoherent mess he was left with. The effort of it made his head ache. 

Standing in a lake, conversing with a stranger who wasn’t a stranger at all, talking about time and difficulties and a man called _Reborn_. Blurred flashes of color - deep black and a vivid, warm yellow. 

_Hufflepuff colors_ , Harry thought, and then winced. The quick association made something in him cringe internally, rebelling against his first instinct. No, not Hufflepuff… 

The sound of a man’s voice, the individual words rising and falling unsteadily, dipping in and out of coherency like a bad radio frequency. Only the tone of his voice was reliably discernible: tired, bitter resignation and exasperation, and, under it all, a deep familiarity that curled neatly under the curt inflection. 

If he strained, if he pushed through the worsening ache in his head, he could just make out the words, that deep voice murmuring, _you’re only saying that because you don’t know any better, lackey. What happened to us… it can’t be fixed that easily, do you understand?_

Harry’s heart gave a painful judder, and he could feel his eyes begin to prickle with an ashamed, humiliated sort of pain. He blinked, wiping a hand across his face in as nonchalant a manner as he could manage, then flattening his hand in the grass, twisting his fingers around, and tugging at the blades gently. 

He called them dreams, but that wasn’t exactly the truth, was it? No, it hadn’t been dreams then, when Harry was fourteen and in way over his head - and they weren’t dreams now. Not even if he wanted them to be. 

But. Did that make them exactly the same? Did that mean… 

Harry grimaced. 

“...Everything okay?” 

Harry turned to look at Skull, who was blinking at him curiously. 

“Fine,” he said. 

“Huh,” Skull said, dragging the sound out unconvincingly. “Right. Well, if everything’s really fine—”

“Which it _is_ —” Harry interjected, narrowing his eyes at Skull. 

“—then we should probably, you know. Talk.” 

Harry blinked. “You want to talk.”

“Nope,” Skull said. “But we need to.” 

Well. He had a point. 

“Alright,” Harry said. “Let’s talk.”

Skull wrinkled his nose, then sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. Harry followed suit, sitting up slowly and watching Skull as he curled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and hugging them tight. 

“It’s just…” Skull started, voice wavering uncertainly. “Everything you guys told me in there, I…” He blew out a breath. “This whole mess… you… I have a part of your _soul_.”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “My magic,” he corrected. “And there’s a chance you might not. We still haven’t—”

“Same thing,” Skull said. Harry winced. “And your friends seem to think I do.” Harry winced again. “And, I mean… it doesn’t stop there, does it? Your magic, your memories - Harry, I remember what Teddy looked like as a _baby_. I met him for the first time _yesterday_.”

Harry stiffened. “You do?”

“Yeah, I do.” Skull ground the hell of his palm into his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. “And I know Hermione’s birthday, and that you met when you were eleven, and she was looking for a frog, and Ron was… there was this… mirror?” He shook his head, shoulders hunching up to rest by his ears. “Look, I don’t understand a lot of it, alright? It’s really confusing, and if I think about it for too long…” Skull gestured at his head with his hands and made an imploding motion, complete with sound effects. “But it’s _there_. Just… all jumbled.” 

“Huh,” Harry said, because it was all he could think to say. 

“Yeah. _Huh_.” 

“That’s… more than I remember,” Harry offered. Skull froze, staring at Harry with wide eyes. 

“ _You_ remember…?” Skull’s face twisted into a grimace. “ _What_ do you remember?”

“Not much,” Harry said. He paused. “Who’s Reborn?”

Skull stared at Harry, seemingly lost for words. The seconds ticked by, and finally he frowned and said, “Yeah, I uh, I don’t really want to answer that.” Then, quickly, before Harry could pursue this line of questioning further, “But you see what I mean? If you have _my_ memories, or—or _some_ of my memories, or however this works—then you probably also have…” Skull faltered, hesitating for a moment, looking faintly ill. “And that makes it more likely that…” Skull swallowed. “There might be other… repercussions.” 

Harry stared at him. “What other repercussions?”

“I…” Skull looked as though he had swallowed a lemon. “That’s what we have to talk about. Because if I have your magic, it’s possible that, well…” 

He trailed off again, looking sick once more, and then covered his eyes with his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into them. 

“Er,” Ron said, from a few feet away, body poised awkwardly to flee the scene at any moment. “Is this a bad time?” 

Skull stiffened and tugged his hands away from his eyes. “No,” he blurted out, hastily, at the exact same time that Harry said, “ _Yes_.”

“Ah,” Ron said. Harry tried to communicate solely through his eyes just how inopportune this interruption was. Using raised eyebrows, a slight tilt of his head, and slow blinks, Ron communicated back that, _how the fuck was I supposed to know that, Harry_. 

Skull said, using his mouth like a normal human being, “You need us for something?”

“Well,” Ron said, a little uncertainly, edging closer. “Not exactly. We were just—well. I thought I should let you guys know that ‘Mione was planning on heading back to our place . She needs to look through some of her books - a fairly large amount of her books, actually - and we figured that going back to our place would be easier than carting everything back and forth. Might make a few other things easier too. So, I just wanted to check in with you guys, ask if either one of you wanted to tag along. Or stay here. Whichever.” 

“I’ll go,” Skull said, scrambling up. “We still need to test the, um, magic thing anyway, right? Just to be sure?”

“We don’t want to rush you,” Ron said, shrugging his shoulders and smiling lopsidedly at Skull. “If you need a bit more time to get used to everything… but, yeah. Getting that done would be dead helpful.”

“Nope, no rush, I’m ready now,” Skull said, very quickly, avoiding looking down at Harry, who was blinking up at him in surprise. “When do we leave?”

Ron blinked. “Er. Five minutes?”

“I’ll just go use the bathroom then,” Skull said, nodding, and then he scrambled back towards the house. Ron watched him go, looking amused. 

“He knows we have bathrooms at our place too, right?” Ron asked.

Harry threw grass at him. Ron made a face, then held out a hand to help pull Harry up, still watching Skull disappear into the house with a slightly puzzled look. “It’s weird to see you looking so twitchy,” Ron said. “And you sound so _American_.” 

Harry made a half-aborted sound of amusement in the back of his throat. “Skull’s not twitchy,” Harry said. He paused. Thought about it. “Not _that_ twitchy,” he amended. 

“Is your eyesight bad in this body too, or what?” 

“I’m pretty sure Skull has twenty-twenty vision,” Harry said. “Better than you.” 

Ron made a face. “My eyesight is perfect,” he said, defensively, as they walked back towards the house. “I don’t need glasses, and I resent these allegations.”

Harry shoved his hand in front of Ron’s face and waved it. “Now, there’s no need to lie, Mr. Weasley-Granger. Tell me honestly - am I holding up three fingers, or two?”

“You’re holding up _all five_ , you asshole.” Ron batted Harry’s hand away. “And that’s not even how the test _works_. Are you checking my eyesight, or if I have a concussion?”

“Both,” Harry said, gravely. 

“I think I’d rather leave that to Hugo, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Whatever makes you feel better,” Harry said, not at all comfortingly. 

Ron barked out a laugh, and his arm settled around Harry’s shoulder as he tugged Harry closer, into a half-hug. Harry tilted his head up to glance at Ron somewhat quizzically. They slowed to a stop. 

“It’s good to have you back,” Ron said, quietly. He squeezed Harry closer for a moment, then let go and opened the door, ducking inside. 

Harry stared after him for a moment, throat tight, and then stepped inside. 

* * *

Teddy’s office was as clean and organized as ever - aside from a pile of papers and folders arranged haphazardly atop his desk, not a single thing looked out of place or disorganized. Ron leaned against the desk casually, notebooks piled in his arms, as Hermione dug through it, searching for the Floo powder. 

Skull hovered by the bookshelf, peering curiously at a few photographs Teddy had propped up, while Harry himself hung back by the far wall, examining the large map that had been carefully stuck to the center of the wall, photographs and notes and papers surrounding it. In one of the photographs, a young woman smiled out at Harry, ponytail askew, grin crooked and happy. Harry followed the glowing line traced from her photograph to a dot on the map - the dot hovered over France, and _Vivienne Belshaw_ was scrawled above it in Teddy’s familiar spidery handwriting. 

Harry’s eyes roved over the map. Several dots in the UK proclaimed themselves to be _Matthew Cunningham, Emil Ortega, Dominic Lugn_. A _Laura Aleman_ , Spain. _Sophia Bohle_ , Norway. _Alicia Carr, Mia Jacobs, Yamamoto Takeshi, Oliver Grayson_ —

Harry scanned faster, feeling faintly nauseated. Italy. _Anthony Scorcio, Rosa Bellini_ \- he stuttered to a stop at his own name, faintly surprised. _Harry Potter_ , in shaky letters, right over Tuscany. He stared for a moment, then frowned and moved on. _There_. In Austria - _Skull de Mort_. 

...Skull _what_?

Harry stared at it. Frowned. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head. 

He followed the line from Skull’s name to a photograph on the side - Skull stared up at him from the glossy finish with a cocky, self-sure smirk. He had styled, spiky purple hair, and his face was adorned with make-up and piercings. His eyes were a bright purple, glittering with pride. He wore a bodysuit of some sort - also purple, Harry was beginning to see a theme - and a helmet was tucked under his arm. 

“Huh,” Harry murmured, his fingertips ghosting over the photo. The young man captured here seemed a far cry from the one Harry had met. Ignoring the obvious differences - the hair, the make-up, the clothes - there seemed to be a spark here that the current Skull had lost. Harry had never seen anything close to that cocky expression cross Skull’s face. 

Harry stared at it for a few moments longer, then let his hand drop back to his side and turned around. 

“—you just have to make sure your pronunciation is clear,” Ron was saying, as Harry approached the group. “I once knew this guy who was terrific, absolutely terrific, one of the greats - or, well. He _would_ have been, but you see, he mispronounced the location once when using the Floo - easy mistake to make, he was heading to this place called the Overlook, you see, but when _he_ said it…” Ron shook his head sorrowfully. “I can’t tell you. I don’t want you to make the same mistake. Suffice it to say, we never found the body.” Ron tilted up towards the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “I think about him everyday,” he said, voice shaking, Harry knew, not with sadness, but with suppressed laughter. 

“Ah,” Skull said, uncertainly. 

Hermione whacked Ron’s arm. “ _Why_ would you try to scare him?” Then, to Skull, ignoring Ron’s indignant yelp, “There’s no need to worry. Statistically speaking, there’s only a one in a twenty-thousand chance that you’ll get hurt using the Floo. I’ll go first to show you how it’s done.” 

“I wasn’t worried,” Skull said, unconvincingly.

Harry patted him on the shoulder consolingly as Hermione took a pinch of the Floo Powder out of the box and stepped into the fireplace, tossing it down and saying, very clearly. “Weasley-Granger Residence.”

The green flames flared and swallowed her whole. Ron watched her go, and shook his head. “I still say we should’ve used something different,” he said, with the sort of long-suffering that came from many years of lost arguments. “Something a _little_ bit more exciting. Still, I whittled her down to _residence_ , at the very least.” Ron winked at Skull. “Oh, the price of having reputations to uphold.” 

“Don’t be fooled,” Harry muttered to Skull, well-aware that Ron could hear every word. “‘Mione’s the only one with any real sort of valuable reputation around here.”

“I’m the irreplaceable trophy husband,” Ron interjected.”My reputation is _just_ as important, thank you very much.” He shook his head mournfully. “Harry’s just jealous. _He_ can’t even begin to conceive of my level of fame, much less match it.”

“It’s the single greatest failure of my life,” Harry confirmed solemnly. “I cry myself to sleep over it.”

Skull’s lips twitched upwards into a smile. He tilted his head at Ron. “You’re famous?”

“Me?” Ron asked. “Oh, extremely.” He held out the Floo box. “On that note, ready to go?”

Skull stepped up and carefully took a pinch of the Floo Powder. He stepped into the fireplace, took a deep breath, and tossed the powder down, calling out, “Weasley-Granger Residence.”

He disappeared into the green flames. 

“Alright,” Ron said. He held out the box of Floo Powder. “Your turn, Harry.” 

It seemed to happen so suddenly. One moment Harry had been staring at where Skull had vanished, a tightness in his chest that he couldn’t explain, like something deep inside them had snapped taut and tight, tugging at him with a painful forcefulness - and the next, he was taking a stumbling step forward, crashing to his knees. Ron darted forward, the notebooks and the Floo box landing on the wooden floor with dull _thuds_. The world tilted - or wait, no, it wasn’t the _world_ , it was _Harry_ \- and Harry collapsed into Ron’s waiting arms. 

“Harry?” Ron’s voice was sharp as he carefully laid Harry on the ground. “Harry, what’s wrong?”

There was a keen distressing ache, deep in his chest, like a barely healed wound had been ripped open once more. Like something was _pulling_ at it. 

Trying to communicate this to Ron seemed like an impossible task - Harry could barely breathe through the pain radiating through his body, and most of his concentration was going towards not letting the scream trapped in his throat out. Breath in, breath out - Harry blinked his eyes open. Ron was kneeling over him now, panicked voice fading in and out as he waved his wand over Harry’s body. Harry’s eyes slid closed as another wave of pain wracked his body, and he jerked and shook with the tremors. 

The world went dark. 

* * *

_It was cold. Why was it cold? Why was he—_

_A warm hand brushed over his forehead, the weight lingering as an unfamiliar voice, a man, said soothingly, “Calm down.” Then, in an aside, “He shouldn’t be waking up yet.”_

_Another voice, this time one he recognized. Unfortunately. “I **told** you. It’s hard to get the doses right for this one.” The brown haired man. The chatty one. _

_Trying to peel his eyelids open was an impossible endeavor. They felt like they’d been weighed down with sandbags, heavy and unyielding. The rest of his body wasn’t much better, laid out on the cool metal surface like a puddle of limp, overcooked noodles. He managed to twitch a finger, and felt utterly pathetic at the small burst of victory that tiny movement sent through him. God, he’d never felt this weak and incapable before in his life._

_“You’ve told me many things. Forgive me if a few managed to slip my mind. Grab the next dose from my bag, will you?”_

_Chatty Asshole snorted. “What am I? Your slave? I’ll have you know you’re here to help **me** , thank you **very** much.”_

_“Technically, I’m here to observe. As you’ve made a point of telling me.”_

_“Yeah, yeah.” The sound of footsteps moving away. Shuffling noises. The clinking of glass bottles. The slight echo of a large, empty room. Where was he?_

_The hand on his forehead ghosted over to his hair, combing through it gently. He could feel his body begin to tremble._

_“It’s alright. Calm down. We’re just going to put you back to sleep.”_

_“No,” he managed to murmur, through his lips and tongue refused to properly shape the word, reducing it to a soft grunt, a puff of air. “No, no, no—”_

_“Hey. Hey, it’s alright. You’re okay. We’re helping you, I promise.”_

_**Helping** him? What the hell was this guy **on**? In what fucking world—_

_“I don’t know **why** he lets you hang around here, you’re such a bleeding heart. Way too soft and squishy for this kind of work.”_

_“A **useful** bleeding heart. And that’s exactly why he lets me ‘hang around’, don’t forget.” There was a moment of silence, then, “You could afford to be nicer yourself.”_

_Chatty Asshole snorted. Footsteps approached. “Yeah, sure thing. I’ll get right on that. Open his mouth for me.”_

_He would have tensed, if he could have. Not that there would have been much point to it. He felt his mouth open, entirely against his own volition, and stay open, as though his jaw had been locked into place._

_“Huh,” Chatty Asshole said. “You gotta teach me that one.” Something bitter and cold and thick was poured into his mouth. Glass clacked awkwardly at his front teeth, before being hastily pulled away. “Whoops,” Chatty Asshole muttered._

_He wished he could hit the guy. Just once. Shove weird shit down **his** throat, see how **he’d** like it—_

_Bleeding Heart sighed, and then his mouth was pushed closed, and he—_

_He couldn’t breathe. He choked, trying to thrash, trying to inhale through his nose, to open his mouth. His body refused to comply. Through it all, a hand rested calmly on his head, a thumb sliding back and forth on his forehead soothingly._

_“He adjusts too quickly to the doses,” Bleeding Heart observed. “They don’t last long enough in his system. Do we know why?”_

_Chatty Asshole huffed in irritation. “What do you **think** , Einstein?”_

_“I think this would be easier for him if he only had to take one dose.” A pointed pause, and then, “Easier for **you** , too.”_

_“Alright, fine, I get it. You wanna figure it out so bad, go ahead.”_

_His lungs burned. Air. He needed air. He needed to breathe. He needed._

_He swallowed, and immediately, he was able to breathe again. He inhaled gratefully._

_“That wasn’t so bad,” Bleeding Heart murmured, and fingers ran through his hair carefully. “Poor guy.”_

_He hated that this asshole thought that running a hand through his hair a few times and sounding kindly and sympathetic was enough to calm him down. Make him docile. More than that, though, he hated that it was working._

_How nice it felt to be comforted. How miserable, how pathetic it was, to be comforted by this. He didn’t want this._

_“Seriously?”_

_“We aren’t here to torture them.”_

_“It isn’t our job to **coddle** them either.”_

_“You call this coddling?”_

_“I call it unnecessary. We aren’t their friends.”_

_Chatty Asshole laughed, short and incredulous. “You really believe that? Shit, he must be feeding you the good stuff.”_

_Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes, and he felt the hand on his head still, then withdraw entirely. Darkness was creeping up on him, and he could feel everything around him going fuzzy and soft, muffling the argument above him. He didn’t. He didn’t want this. He wanted to leave, he wanted to escape, he wanted them to find him already, he. He wanted to be found. They had to be looking. They had to be close._

_Any day now._

* * *

Harry’s eyes slipped open slowly, blinking blearily as the ceiling above him came into focus. _Ow_ , was his first thought. _Ouch_ followed swiftly on its heels. 

He was in Teddy’s guest room, he noted, somewhat fuzzily. His head pulsed with pain, and the space behind his eyes felt uncomfortably warm and achy, while the rest of his body felt curiously sore and tender, in a way that was uncomfortably reminiscent of when he first awoke in it. 

“Harry?” There was a gentle touch to his shoulder, and Harry shifted his head to the side to squint at Ron, who was leaning forward from the chair he had pulled up to the bedside. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh.” Harry croaked, shifting to sit up, and only then noticing the warm weight tossed around his middle. He turned his head and was greeted by his own face, slack-jawed and placid in sleep. A trail of drool crept down his face, soaking into the pillow beneath his cheek. “Huh. This is. Cozy.” 

“Ah, yeah. About that.” Ron leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, while Harry gingerly lifted Skull’s arm off of him and set it gently down on the bed. Skull shifted, frowning slightly, but slept on. “It, er. It seemed to get better the closer the two of you were. So. We kinda just…” Ron trailed off a shrugged, motioning to the bed. 

Harry sat up fully, giving Ron his full attention. “What do you mean, _it_?”

“I _mean_ the fit you had in Teddy’s office, Harry. The whole…” Ron threw his hands in the air, evidently at a loss for words. “I was losing my _mind_ trying to figure out what was happening to you, and Hermione Floos in about a minute later with Skull, who’s having a right fit too, and then the both of you just…” Ron gestured helplessly, “ _Settle_ , somehow. And we bring you in here, and Hermione tells me about how she almost had a heart attack when Skull landed in the fireplace, screaming his head off. The two of you shaved _years_ off our lives. If I die anytime soon, it’s your damn fault.”

Harry winced. “Oh,” he said. “I—sorry.”

Ron leveled an exasperated look at Harry. “Don’t apologize like you did it on purpose,” he said. “Seriously. I’m just happy you’re awake.” Ron’s look sharpened, and he gestured to the assortment of potions on the nightstand. “Speaking of which. Anything hurt? Your headache back?”

“Yeah, actually,” Harry said, and Ron leaned over and silently picked out a Pain Reliever, tossing it to Harry, who downed it without hesitation. 

“Do we have any idea what happened?” Harry asked, handing the vial back. 

Ron winced, just a little bit. “Well. We have a theory.” 

“Let me guess,” Harry said. “I’m not going to like it.”

“That’s one way of putting it, yeah. Wake Skull up, will you? I’m going to grab Hermione. I have a feeling we should get this over with sooner rather than later.” 

* * *

The talk, in the end, lasted a little over an hour - and no, Harry didn’t like it. 

“Harry, wait—“

“Let him go, Skull,” Ron said, softly. It was the last thing Harry heard before the door shut behind him with a _click_.

Some distant part of him appreciated Ron’s intervention. Now, more than ever, Harry needed space. 

Especially from Skull. 

Something in his chest twisted sharply, a tender ache rising to the surface. Harry rubbed at his chest absently, feeling slightly nauseous as he strode through the house and up the stairs. How far could he go? How far could he push it? 

How far did he _want_ to push it?

Harry slowed to a stop halfway up the stairwell, foot hesitating over the next step. Slowly, he set it down, then turned and sat on the stair. There was a window at the bottom of the stairwell, and through it Harry could examine the hurried trails of the raindrops as they slid down the glass and eventually disappeared from view. If he cocked his head and listened, he could hair the rain drum against the roof, and the rumbling of the thunder as it rolled slowly through the sky. 

Harry couldn’t believe he had been so stupid. No, not stupid. Willfully blind. 

_We already know something went wrong with the ritual the two of you were subjected to_ , Hermione had said, back in the room. _We know that when you switched bodies, it wasn’t a clean-cut_.

Yeah, they had known that. With Harry’s magic gone - and Skull the most likely receiver - there wasn’t really any doubt. The headaches, too, seemed to be a side-effect, but one that was easily explained away - but the _dreams_. The memories. 

Those had been a little more puzzling, because—

 _Think about it,_ Hermione had said, softly. _Neither of you have forgotten anything the other remembers, right? And considering your situation, and the episode the two of you had earlier, that would only make sense if it wasn’t that certain parts of your memories had been swapped, per se, but rather, if there was…_

A link. A freak accident, a mistake, an intermixing of souls. 

A bond.

A _soul_ bond.

A newly formed, terribly sensitive, short-leashed soul bond.

The tightness in his chest at even the thought of being separated. The worry and concern he felt at leaving Skull on his own at any point, which he had contributed to his own paranoia and protectiveness. How much he trusted Skull, already, despite having known the man for only two days. How he had contributed it to them bonding through their shared, miserable experience.

Well. He hadn’t exactly been wrong, had he? 

The rain best harder against the roof overhead, and the rain slipped faster and faster down the glass of the window. A streak of lightning illuminated the sky outside. Thunder boomed seconds later. Harry laced his fingers together and stared down at his feet.

He didn’t know what this meant. 

Or, well. He knew, in a very literal sense, what this meant. He and Skull were connected. Tied together. Quite literally, in a way, since they wouldn’t be able to stray far from one another - though it remained unclear if that particular side-effect was permanent, or, considering the freshness of the bond, a more temporary affliction. Traveling through the Floo had stretched it too far, too fast, so they wouldn’t be doing that again. Their minds were linked now, in a way, and until they learned to control it - _if_ they could learn to control it - things could and would leak out through either end. Memories, triggered by people or places or the odd circumstance. Emotions, possibly. Thoughts? Perhaps, though Harry hadn’t noticed anything. 

It influenced the both of them, evidently. Was the trust and fondness Harry had cultivated for Skull merely a side-effect of the bond, or had he formed the emotions genuinely? 

Was there a way to discern between the two? Did it matter, if the end result was the same? 

More than that, though - what did this mean for the future? Was it something that could be fixed? Or, would the bond remain even if they were returned to their rightful bodies? Would this bond haunt them for the rest of their lives? 

Or. Or rather. The rest of Skull’s life. Because Harry…

Harry wasn’t aging, and he wasn’t growing, and he wasn’t maturing, not in the way his friends and family were. 

He didn’t like to think about it, but. It was hard to deny. Hard to avoid, though Harry certainly did his best. 

What would it do to him, if Skull died, and he continued to live on? Or, conversely… would this mean that Skull might too, from this point on, never grow old? Never die? 

Harry wouldn’t wish that on him. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Immortality was a remarkable gift, but it was one given to the wrong person. Harry has never wanted this. He had spent all of his life wishing to be reunited with his loved ones, not to sit and watch all the rest of them grow old and move onto a place he wouldn’t be able to follow. 

He didn’t want to live like this, and he didn’t want Skull to have to either. 

Maybe he wouldn’t. 

The truth of it was, they didn't know enough to properly guess or prepare, and it made Harry feel restless and anxious. They would figure this out, they _would_ \- but Harry needed to find a way to come to terms with this first. 

_Count your blessings, Potter_ , Harry thought grimly. _At least you aren’t a damn Horcrux again._

He didn’t know how long he sat there, listening to the pattering of the rain - only that he certainly didn’t feel anymore settled by the time someone gently cleared their throat at the bottom of the stairwell. 

Harry knew who it was without looking up. The tightness in his chest had loosened. 

“Skull,” he acknowledged quietly, still staring down at his feet. 

“Mind some company?”

Harry considered saying yes. Considered asking Skull to leave him alone. 

But.

Harry wasn’t the only one going through this.

“No,” Harry said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “It’s a free staircase. Plenty of steps. You’re welcome to it.”

Footsteps approached, slowly, and out of the corner of his eye Harry could see Skull stop to turn and sit next to Harry. Harry scooted over to make more room, and Skull collapsed with a sigh. 

“Tested the whole magic thing,” Skull said, after a moment. Harry made an inquiring sound. “Yeah. They had me do… er. I think they called it a color changing charm?” Skull made a frustrated _tsk-_ ing noise with his tongue. “I dunno. Didn’t change anything, but it hurt like _hell_. Felt like—“

“You’d been bit by a wall of electricity?”

“...Not exactly what I was going to say, but yeah. That works.” Skull’s foot tapped against the stair below. “So I guess I have your magic,” he said, quietly. 

“Well,” Harry said, studying the faint scars on his hand intently. There was one between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, shaped like a crescent moon. He wondered how it happened. “Good to have it confirmed.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Skull said, just as quietly as before. There was short pause, then, “It’s been an interesting day.”

“That’s one word for it.” 

An awkward pause. Skull took a deep breath, and said, “You want to talk about it?”

Harry chewed on the inside of his cheek, and flicked his gaze over to Skull, who was staring quite studiously down at the window. “Why do you seem so calm about this?” 

Skull tended slightly, and cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Isn’t that the question,” he said. “I guess I’m kind of wondering that myself. Maybe my reaction is just delayed, or something, and the panic will really set in later.” Skull hesitated for a long moment, gaze darting to Harry, then back to the window. “But,” he said. “I think mostly…” Skull trailed off and worked his jaw for a moment, grimacing. “I think maybe I’m able to be so calm right now because I’ve been through this before.”

Several seconds ticked by as Harry let those words sink in. “I’m sorry,” he said, scarcely believing his ears. “I _must_ have misheard you. Did you just say that this has—”

“Happened before. Yeah. Not these exact circumstances, though wouldn’t _that_ be a real kicker, but. Something similar enough.” 

A beat of silence, and then, still determinedly not looking at Harry, “It was a group of us. We got mixed up in something stupid. Something dangerous. And, well. There were consequences.” Skull’s voice wavered, and he curled in on himself slightly.

“You don’t have to—”

Skull cut him off with a shaky laugh, and shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s fine. I should tell you. I just—I’ve never really talked about this with anyone else before.” Another shaky laugh. “Even with each other, we never really—I mean, more recently, we’ve been _trying_ , but—“ he cut himself off and swallowed. Licked his lips, then said, “Everyone always—they talk about it like it’s supposed to be this… this unbelievably wonderful gift. Something precious. But when it happened to us - we didn’t have a _choice_. It didn’t feel like what I was told it would. None of us wanted it, and we didn’t want each other, and we just. We were miserable. It was a curse.”

“Are you still…?”

Skull huffed a laugh. “Yeah,” he said, and curled in on himself, covering his eyes with a hand. “Yeah, we are.”

Harry watched him for a moment, then slid closer, nudging Skull’s shoulder with his companionably. After a few moments, Skull got his shaky breaths under control, and said, “It didn’t go away. After. When we… when we were hoping it to. After everything. It didn’t break. So we decided that, maybe, we should just make the best of a bad situation. Stop running, stop fighting, start trying to make it work. I don’t know. Maybe it was working. Maybe we were just kidding ourselves.” Skull’s voice was painfully raw, with a wetness to it he couldn’t disguise, and it wobbled slightly as he spoke. 

Harry pressed closer to him, a long line of heat from shoulder to thigh, and waited patiently for Skull to regain his composure.

The minutes ticked by, and Harry finally said, softly, “I’m sorry.”

Skull shrugged a shoulder. “Not like it’s your fault,” he said, wiping at his eyes and sitting up.

“What does this mean for us?”

“I don’t know,” Skull said. “I don’t know how _this_ bond will affect the others, or if you’ll be affected by them, or…” Skull trailed off with a sound of frustration. “I don’t think we have to worry about it yet,” he offered. He tapped the bracelet on his wrist. “I haven’t been able to feel them since this got slapped on me. I think it has something to do with sealing my Flames away, but…” Skull stared off into the distance with a thoughtful expression, then shook his head, clearing it. 

“Plus,” he added, with a small frown, “I think… this bond is a little different than the ones I have with the others. It feels different. Enough for me to not really notice it until now. And from what we’ve learned so far, it sounds a little different too. We aren’t linked in exactly the same way you and I are. But I…” his voice faltered for a moment. “I just don’t want things to go the same way. I’ve done it that way, and it’s just a lot of pain, and anger, and resentment, and I don’t want to go through that again. I want this to be better. So whatever we have to do to make this work… I’ll do it.”

Harry stared at him for a long moment, stunned and completely wordless. “Your life concerns and confuses me,” he said, at last, fumbling for something, _anything_ , that would finally break the silence. 

Skull snorted, turning to raise an eyebrow at Harry. If his eyes were a little red, Harry didn’t mention it. “ _My_ life? Yours is the one giving me migraines, you bastard.”

The laugh that burst out of Harry surprised even himself. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “Fair enough.”

Skull turned away with a pleased smile, and another silence lapsed while Harry worked through all

the new, entirely unexpected information he had been given.

“I think,” he finally said, carefully. “For what it’s worth, I’d like to try and make this work too. But… I think part of making this work… might start with you telling me a bit more about where you’re from.”

The same sour lemon look from outside flashed briefly on Skull’s face. “Yeah,” he said, after a second or two. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve put it off for long enough. There are a few other things you should know.”

Skull blew out a breath and straightened slightly. He licked his lips nervously, and then after another long moment, he began to talk.

* * *

“The mafia,” Harry said, slowly. “The _mafia_ , You’re part of the _mafia_.”

“Well—”

“The mafia. That has _magic._ The _secret magical mafia society_.”

“It’s not _actually_ magic—”

“You set things on fire using flames you conjure using your _willpower_. What part of that doesn’t sound magical to you?”

“It’s a little more complicated than—they don’t _just_ set things on fire-” Skull faltered, seeming to realize that didn’t help his argument any. “-or, uh. I mean.”

“The _mafia_ ,” Harry repeated, because it deserved repeating. 

“I didn’t _want_ to join,” Skull said. 

“I’m not _judging_ your life choices right now, I’m just saying—” Harry cut himself off and straightened, a realization flashing through him like a bolt of lightning. “Wait,” he said. “This changes the whole investigation. Everyone still thinks it's _muggles_ being kidnapped. This could _help_. This could—”

“No.”

Harry frowned, feeling somewhat knocked askew. “What?”

“I know where you’re going with this,” Skull said. “We can’t tell anyone.”

“But this could—”

“Look,” Skull ran a hand through his hair. “You have a - what did you call it? - a Statute of Secrecy, right? _We_ have Omertá. There are extenuating circumstances with you, I can get away with telling _you_. But telling a whole _world_ of magical people, whose first act when some of them learned about us was to start _kidnapping and experimenting?_ No. No way.”

Harry bit the inside of his cheek. “Just Teddy, then,” he tried. “Teddy knows how to keep things quiet. If we tell him it’s important not to let anyone know—”

“You want me to tell a cop that I’m involved in the mafia.”

“Well,” Harry said, reasonably. “He would… not _approve_ , exactly, but he wouldn’t just toss you into _Azkaban_ —”

“Saying ‘oh well he wouldn’t _immediately_ toss you into jail’ makes me feel a _whole_ lot better, let me tell you—”

“Ron and Hermione, then,” Harry said. 

“Omertá—”

“They know how to keep a secret too,” Harry snapped, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I…” he sighed. “What other options do we have, Skull? We can’t just… not say anything. Not when we could be helping all the others who were taken.” 

“...We could solve it ourselves.”

Harry paused. “Huh,” he said, slowly. 

Skull seemed to sense a weakness, and he pursed it eagerly. “Think about it. I have knowledge from my side of things - how long this has been going on, who was going missing, what we had managed to figure out, my _own_ capture. And you’ve witnessed plenty yourself. And we have resources, and you already know about Flames, and—”

“Hold on,” Harry said, holding up a hand, feeling slightly unsteady. “Just… hold on. Give me a second.”

Skull shut his mouth with an audible _click_. 

“We can’t… if we _were_ to do that,” Harry said. “We would still have to tell the others _something_. We can’t keep something like this from them forever. We have to tell them _sometime_.”

Skull let out a groan and rubbed at his face. “Why are you so insistent on me _telling people things_?” Then he perked up slightly. “That wasn’t a no, though.”

“Sharing is caring,” Harry said. He paused. “And no. It’s not.”

“So we’re gonna do this?”

“We can _try_.”

Skull’s answering grin was full of relief. Harry smiled back, then let out a groan as he stretched. “Is that everything?” He asked. “Nothing else we need to cover right now?”

Skull deflated. “Uh, not exactly,” he said. “Two more things.”

“Hm?”

“The first is actually a, um. Favor. If I could ask you for one.”

Harry blinked. “Yeah, go ahead.:

“Could I… I mean-” Skull drummed his fingers on his knees nervously. “I need a phone,” he said, at last. “A, um, disposable one. I just need to get in touch with…” Frustration flashed across his face. “Well. Some people. The guy we ran into at the hotel, probably. Just to… I don’t know.” His hands clenched around his knees. “What Harper said… I just need to warn them to be a little more careful. And… this whole situation probably looks really bad from their side, and I don’t want you guys to have to deal with more problems than you already are. If I could talk to him, maybe I could…” Skull swallowed. “I mean. I don’t know if me saying anything would help, if they would even listen to me… but I can try.” 

“Of course,” Harry said, instantly. “We can get you a phone. Is there a time frame, or…?”

“Sooner would probably be better,” Skull admitted. “And I shouldn’t call from around here. In case they track the call.”

That raised many questions, but Harry didn’t voice any of them as he nodded and mentally shuffled his list of priorities around. “Got it.” He said. “And the second thing?”

“Well,” Skull hesitated again. “I never really… look, part of the reason I needed to tell you about Flames, before you got hung up on the whole mafia thing—”

“It’s not _unreasonable_ for the _mafia thing_ to _surprise_ someone—”

Skull waved a hand dismissively. “ _Anyway_ ,” he stressed. “Not the point. I, um. The whole thing with your magic…” he paused, took a deep breath, and rushed out, “I don’t think your magic is the only thing that got swapped around.”

Harry froze. “Ah,” he said. “So I—”

“Yeah.”

Harry chewed at his lip, then pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s move this to the kitchen,” he said. “I’m starving. And while we’re there… maybe you could run me through the whole Flame thing again, one more time.”

***

They relocated to the kitchen, where Harry supplied them both with food and they bent their heads together over the table and Skull explained - through bites of his sandwich - as much as he could. It was noticeable, how Skull avoided the topic of the group of people he was soul bonded to, how he danced around what had bound them together in the first place, and how and _why_ \- but Skull had a right to keep things private from Harry, even now - _especially_ now, and with such a sensitive and personal thing - and so Harry didn’t push. 

Beyond the occasional side-step, or bout of hesitant uncertainty, Skull seemed somewhat relieved to finally be able to talk candidly with Harry. Still, there was only so many times Skull was willing to walk through the different Flame types, and answer Harry’s many questions, before he began to beg off. 

“I’m not really good at explaining _why_ or _how_ they happen,” Skull said, nudging his empty plate around the table with his fingertips. “I just… I don’t think they’re magic, alright? Ver—er. Someone else I know could probably explain it better. He’s nuts about all of this stuff. Very into research… invention…” Skull trailed off. “But yeah. You’re pretty caught up on most of it.” He frowned. “I think. I might be forgetting a few things.”

“You’ve covered a lot,” Harry said. “Thanks. For explaining all that.”

“Don’t mention it,” Skull mumbled. He pushed his plate away fully and pillowed his head on his arms, slumping over the table. 

It occured to Harry, in that moment, that he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anyone else around the house. “Are Hermione and Ron still around?”

Skull muffled his yawn into his elbow. “They knocked out in the guest bedroom,” he said. “Fell asleep on me a little while after the magic test. They’re probably still there.”

“That’s good,” Harry said. Hermione and Ron hadn’t seemed to have gotten much - if any - sleep the night before. 

“Mm,” Skull grunted, eyes closing. “‘M gonna just close my eyes for a second. Don’t let me sleep too long.”

“Alright,” Harry said, wondering if he shouldn’t suggest that Skull move somewhere more comfortable. He watched Skull for a moment, then shrugged to himself and stretched, rising to his feet. He’d give Skull a few minutes then go from there. Harry piled their plates together and brought them to the sink, washing and drying them slowly. 

He wasn’t feeling too hot himself at the moment. Despite the potion he had taken earlier, Harry could feel a terrible headache cresting over the horizon, and he had no doubt that the information Skull had given him was the cause of it. 

Not that Harry could exactly blame Skull. He _had_ asked for it. 

And now he had it. Harry put the plates away and closed the cupboard door, leaning against the countertop as he closed his eyes and ground the heel of his palm into his forehead. A flash of purple streaked through the darkness of his lids. Flames of different colors blossoming, flaring, streaking through the dark - Harry rubbed at his eyes, and blinked them open furiously. 

_What do you mean, you don’t know what Flames are? Why is this kid here, again?_

_I know what **fire** is! And I’m **not** a kid!_

“Harry?” Teddy stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his tired eyes flickering over the room, examining where Skull lay slumped against the table, and finally landing on Harry. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I was just thinking.”

“ _Merlin_ ,” Teddy said, with an exaggerated shudder. “ _Please_ don’t say that word. My brain _hurts_. No more t-word for today, thank you very much.”

Harry watched with amusement as Teddy dragged his feet across the kitchen and slumped against the counter opposite Harry, running a hand down his face with a theatrical flair. 

“So I’m assuming your day didn’t go too well.”

Teddy shrugged. “Better than yours.”

“Ah,” Harry said. “So you heard.”

“Yeah. Hermione let me know.” Teddy let his head roll back on his shoulders, so he could frown up at the ceiling. “Things just keep getting more and more complicated, don’t they?”

 _You don’t even know the half of it_. 

“Yeah,” Harry said. 

“Which,” Teddy said, snapping his fingers. “Reminds me. I got a look at your bracelets today, before I left - hope you don’t mind - because I wanted to try and dig into those today, and I needed to confirm a few things before I went off and started poking my nose around where I’m not wanted.”

“Right,” Harry said, straightening. “You said you might have heard of something like this before. Any luck?”

“Depends on your definition.” Teddy frowned. “I mean, I was definitely right about where I had heard of the bracelets before, although you’re not gonna like it.”

“Yeah, that seems like a common theme today. Lay it on me.”

“So - and bear with me here - you remember the whole debacle with Azkaban, right? All the discussions and arguments over whether or not it was human to continue to use the Dementors to guard those sentenced there…” Harry nodded. It would be hard to _forget_ , quite honestly. “Well, ignoring how many arguments there were over what exactly to _do_ with the Dementors, if we were to get rid of them - there was also the issue of how we were going to guard Azkaban after they were gone. What methods to use, how to implement them…” 

“Right,” Harry said. 

“I recognized the bracelets because…” Teddy scrunched up his face as he tried to figure out a way to word what he wanted to say. “They sounded awfully similar to a scrapped option that was being put forward at the time. And,” Teddy took a deep breath, “I wasn’t wrong. The design and function of the bracelets you’re wearing are… very similar. Uncannily so.” 

Harry blinked. “Are you saying,” he said. “That right now, me and Skull are wearing prototypes of bracelets designed for usage in _Azkaban_?”

“Well,” Teddy said, leaning forward, expression serious. “Here’s the thing. The bracelets were designed to - well. You know. Seal away the magic of the wearer. _But_. When the bracelets were scrapped, it was because during the testing stages, when they actually put it _on_ someone, the effects were…” Teddy made a face. “Unpleasant. Apparently, the guy just started seizing. As best they could theorize, being cut off from his magic in such a sudden way, with no warning or way to prepare, just sent his system into shock. He couldn’t cope with it. He almost _died_ before they got it off.” Teddy shook his head. “They called the project off after that. Decided to go a different route.”

A frown tugged at Harry’s lips. “These aren’t exactly a walk in the park, but it isn’t nearly as bad as that.”

“Yeah, which makes me think that the bracelets you guys are wearing aren’t so _prototype_ anymore.”

“You think someone finished the project?”

“Finished and improved.”

“So,” Harry said. “We should be looking at the original creator. Get in contact with them, see if they have any blueprints lying around, any other prototypes, if anyone had access to them—”

“That’s when it gets tricky,” Teddy said. “The project _was_ for Azkaban, which falls under the jurisdiction of my department - but, considering it was before my time as Head Auror, _and_ that the project was actually sanctioned _for_ and worked on _by_ the Department of Mysteries…”

“You haven’t been able to get any information on it,” Harry finished, resisting the urge to rub at his temples in frustration. 

“Yup,” Teddy sighed. He tilted his head, cracking his neck with a sound of relief. “They’re paranoid, secretive bastards on the _best_ of days. Asking for information on an old project that supposedly hasn’t seen the light of day in years is sure to ring all sorts of alarm bells.” Teddy shifted slightly, arms coming up to fold across his chest. “I could go through more official channels - if I brought up that it’s for a high priority investigation, I could probably be handwaved through by our higher-ups, but that would mean _explaining_ why it’s part of the investigation, and that would mean…”

“Telling them about me and Skull,” Harry said. He pursed his lips. “We could try going through… _less_ official channels,” he suggested. “Luna used to work in the DoM. Maybe she still has connections she could use to help get us more information…”

Teddy cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why did I have a feeling you might suggest something like that?”

“Must be those keen detective instincts.”

Teddy barked a laugh. “Yeah, must be.” He rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry, though. Didn’t mean to make you work through this with me, just wanted to let you know what was going on.”

“It’s fine,” Harry said. More than fine. Strangely enough, he felt a lot more settled now than he had before. Maybe feeling like he was doing something was enough to combat the restless anxiety and stress that crawled under his skin. “Hugo told me you were trying to do damage control yesterday? The muggle at the hotel?”

“Ah, yeah.” Teddy winced. “I had to at _least_ give the Head of Law Enforcement over there a heads up about it. Had to come up with this whole excuse for why I was apparating around there so carelessly in the first place, too. She bought it, but she definitely thinks I’m about ten different kinds of idiot now.” He shrugged, a little helplessly. “I don’t know what they’re gonna do, but she told me she’d see about cleaning up my mess, so. It’s a little out of my hands, now.” Teddy hesitated for a moment, then added, a strange note to his voice, “So you talked to Hugo yesterday?” 

Harry tilted his head slightly in confusion. “Not much,” he said. “Just while he was fixing us up, and before he had to leave for work. Why?”

Teddy opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said at last. “I just actually haven’t really seen Hugo lately, is all. But he’s been busy with work these last few months, so it makes sense, I just…” Teddy laughed, a little bit, sounding self-conscious. “I guess it just felt like he was avoiding me, a little bit. But he seemed normal when I talked to him yesterday, so maybe…” Another shrug. “I’m probably overthinking this, is all.”

Huh. That was a little strange, admittedly. Though it wasn’t necessarily true when they were younger, Teddy and Hugo had grown to be very close to each other over the years. For Hugo to be avoiding Teddy… 

“I’m sure he’s just busy,” Harry offered, comfortingly. “You know how he is, sometimes. He can get so wrapped up in work, or whatever project he’s doing, or thing he’s studying - it doesn’t have to mean anything.” 

“I _know_ ,” Teddy said. “I guess I’m just used to him checking in a little more often, is all.”

“Just give it some time. I’m sure everything will go back to normal between the two of you.”

“Yeah,” Teddy said. He rubbed at his temples. “Yeah, you’re right. And he did send me an owl earlier today, so I guess they already are. I’ve just been overthinking everything lately.” 

“What did he say?”

“That there was a problem with a patient, so he wouldn’t be able to make it back here for the next few days, unfortunately.” Teddy shrugged. “Always busy with work, that one.”

“Pot, kettle.” Harry said, dryly. 

“Ha,” Teddy said, just as dry, though humor sparked in his eyes. He glanced around the kitchen and sighed, blinking tiredly. “I’m not even really hungry anymore,” he said. He eyed Skull, still snoozing on the table, with some envy. “I’m just gonna go try and get some sleep.”

“Before you go,” Harry said, also glancing over at Skull, “Could I ask you a favor?”

“A favor? Sure.”

“Skull needs a phone. To talk to someone, let them know he’s alright. But he said it has to be, er. Disposable. And he wants to make the call somewhere that isn’t near here.”

Teddy blinked, raising a puzzled eyebrow. “A disposable phone,” he repeated. “And a location away from here to make the call.” He paused. “Do I… _want_ to know why those conditions are there?”

Harry clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “Probably not,” he said. 

“Alright. I won’t ask.” The puzzled look was still there, but faint traces of amusement had also made themselves known. “When does he need the phone?”

“Sooner the better.”

Teddy made a thoughtful sound and stared off into the distance thoughtfully. “Okay. One phone and discreet location, coming right up. How does tomorrow sound?”

***

The area of the public park located somewhere in London that they found themselves in the next day was relatively secluded. Harry hadn’t seen anyone walk by them in the past twenty minutes that they’d been sitting on this bench - which, he supposed, was a good thing. 

Next to him, Skull flipped the phone open and closed nervously, staring down at it with a conflicted expression. Harry nudged him. “You still want to do this?”

Skull nodded slowly, closing the phone and running his thumb over the top of it. “Yeah,” he said. “‘Sides. You’re the one who’s going to be doing most of the work.” Skull gave him a searching look. “Are you ready? You don’t have to do this either.”

“I think you’ve prepared me well enough,” Harry said, dryly. Skull had spent the last hour - from leaving the house, to buying the phone, to sitting down here - walking Harry through the call, with very clear instructions and advice. Quite frankly, Harry felt more than prepared for a phone call that would last, at most, three minutes. 

“Right,” Skull said. He took a deep breath and flipped the phone open. “Just be clear and to the point,” Skull said, as he punched in the number. “Fon’s gonna have serious doubts about what you’re saying, so just. Be as convincing as you can. Tell him you need some time before you go back—”

“—but I’m fine and have things under control, and he should take more care, because they might be going after the rest of them now too,” Harry finished. “I know, Skull.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Skull muttered, and passed the phone over. 

Harry took it and hesitated. “I could put it on speaker, if you wanted to listen,” he offered. 

“...No,” Skull said, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think… I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to hear…” He worked his jaw for a moment, then said, “No. If there’s anything I need to know, you can tell me. I don’t need to hear it.”

Harry nodded, then before he could think twice about it, hit the call button and raised the phone to his ear. 

It rang. 

And rang. 

And rang. 

It rang until the automated voice at the end clicked on and informed Harry that the caller was unavailable to pick up the phone, and to please leave his message at the tone. 

Harry pulled the phone away from his ear and hung up the call. “Er,” he said. “Could you have typed in the wrong number?”

Skull frowned. “What, he didn’t pick up?”

Harry shook his head, and Skull said, “Try again.”

So Harry called. And called. And called. 

Each attempt only resulted in that same automated voice politely requesting he leave his message at the tone. 

Skull’s knuckles were white where they gripped the bench on either side of his body. “He always picks up,” Skull said. “I don’t understand why…”

“Maybe he doesn’t recognize the number?” 

Skull shook his head. “Wouldn’t matter. Only so many people have that phone number in the first place. He’d pick up.”

“Did you want me to leave a message?”

“No,” Skull said, sounding frustrated. “No, it’s no good that way, I have to talk to one of them.”

“Who, then?”

Skull stared across the park, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully at an unassuming tree. “Fon was the best option,” he murmured to himself. “None of the others would be nearly as calm as him… or as willing to listen. But…” he closed his eyes, slumping his shoulders in defeat. “Fuck. Alright.”

He held out his hand for the phone, and when Harry handed it over, began typing in a new number. “You’re going to be talking to Reborn,” Skull said, resignation clear in his voice. 

“Reborn,” Harry repeated, slowly. 

“I’m not happy about it either,” Skull muttered, thumb smoothing over the buttons as he hesitated over the last number. “But he’ll listen long enough for you to say what you need. The important thing with him is to not let him get control of the conversation. It’s kinda difficult, and he’s an asshole who’ll be trying to get as much information from you as he can. He’s, uh. Good at that. And not very nice, so. Watch out for that too.”

“Right,” Harry said, dubiously. “And this is the next best person to call?”

“Mammon changes their number every six months, so yeah.” Skull pressed the last number, then passed it back to Harry. “And the rest of them are more likely to talk over you from the get go. Reborn likes to wait so he can trample over you in a more informed, soul crushing way.” 

“Charming,” Harry said. 

Skull snorted. “When he wants to be.” Then, under his breath, “Fucking bastard.” 

And on that note, Harry hit call. 

The phone rang. 

And rang. 

And—it clicked. “Hello?” Harry tried. “Reborn?”

“ _Skull_.”

The familiarity of the smooth, deep voice on the other end of the line swept over Harry, so strong it made it head ache. 

A beat of silence. Harry licked his lips, trying to regain his composure, thinking, _maybe I slightly overestimated my ability here_ , and then he opened his mouth to say—

“ _Where are you_.”

Harry shut his mouth with an audible _click_ , and glanced over at Skull, who was watching him with raised eyebrows and a guarded expression. After a second, Skull tilted his head in confusion and motioned for him to go on. 

Harry let out a breath and affixed his gaze to the distant horizon. “Look,” he said. “That doesn’t matter right now. I wanted—I _needed_ to call you to tell you guys to be careful. The people who got me… there’s a chance they’ll be going for all of you, now. I got out, and I’m fine, I have things under control, I just need some time before I head back.” 

Another silence, this time somehow tinged with incredulity.

“ _You got out_.” Reborn repeated, voice dripping with that same incredulity. “ _You’re fine. And you have everything under control_.”

“Er.” Harry pressed a hand to the side of his head, wincing. “That’s about it, yeah.” He paused. “Well. Goodb—”

“ _Verde was attacked_ ,” Reborn said, briskly, cutting Harry off neatly.

“Um,” Harry said, to disguise the fact that ‘ _who?’_ had almost slipped, unwittingly, out of his mouth. 

“ _You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?_ ” Reborn continued. 

Harry glanced at Skull. “Look—”

“ _Because_ ,” Reborn continued smoothly, effectively trampling over Harry’s weak attempt to wrestle the conversational reigns back. “ _You see, the thing that we’ve been trying to figure out, is how anyone knew where he was, much less how to break past his defences so easily. It shouldn’t have been possible._ ” Then, pointedly, “ _Not unless they had inside information_.”

Harry’s blood went cold. _We’ve probably learned enough to go after the others_ , Harper had said. _Thanks to your help, of course._

Skull’s hand landed on Harry’s arm. “What is it?” Skull asked, very quietly. 

Harry shook his head. 

“I don’t appreciate what you’re implying, Reborn,” Harry said, voice icy. Something in him twisted and turned furiously. Harper’s voice whispered in his ears, _you gave us **so much**._ No, Harry had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t quite so simple as Skull happily and willingly spilling his guts. There was more than one way to get information out of an unwilling man, and if Harry was even slightly correct, then it _wasn’t Skull’s fault._

“ _Am I implying something?_ ”

Harry’s grip on the phone tightened. “Good _bye_ , Reb—”

“ _Who were you with, in Spain?_ ” Reborn asked, cutting Harry off again. “ _Who are you with right now? The same people?_ ”

“None of your business,” Harry snapped. “I told you, I’m fine—”

“ _—and you have things under control. Yes, I heard. I just don’t believe you._ ” 

“That’s unfortunate,” Harry said. “It also sounds like a problem of your own making, though. Feel free to work through it on your own.” 

Harry snapped the phone shut, and resisted the urge to chuck it into the trees. 

“...I’m guessing that didn’t go so well,” Skull said. He hesitated. “What did he say to you?”

“Verde was attacked,” Harry said. He handed the phone back to Skull. “And, er.” He must have hesitated too long, because Skull’s eyes grew sharp, searching Harry’s face. 

“...What?”

“There was… he might have implied,” Harry’s gaze darted down to closely examine the ground underfoot. “That you might have helped. In a way.” 

There was a long, drawn out, shocked sort of silence, before Skull stood and dropped the phone on the ground. He raised his foot and brought it down with a sharp _crack_. 

_Stomp. Crack. Stomp. Crack._

The phone was very thoroughly destroyed when Skull finally collapsed back on the bench, covering his face with his hands. “I didn’t,” he said. “I wouldn’t. I would never. How could he.” Skull stopped, seemingly unable to finish the sentence. A shudder wracked through his body. “I _didn’t_ ,” he repeated, desperately. 

Harry wrapped an arm around Skull’s shoulders and tugged him closer. Skull curled into him, little tremors still making their way through his body. “You might not have had a choice,” Harry said, carefully. 

Skull jerked against him, face twisted into a snarl. “I _wouldn’t_ ,” he snapped. “Even if they - there was _nothing_ they could have done to me that would make me—”

“Legilimency,” Harry said. “Is the art of reading people’s minds. Searching through their memories, through their thoughts. You wouldn’t have any defences against it, and it wouldn’t even take someone proficient in it to crack into yours. All it would take was eye contact, and someone who had some idea of what they were doing.” 

Skull quieted, then slowly pulled away from Harry. “I… I don’t really remember…” 

He went quiet again, and bent to sweep the broken pieces of the phone into his hand. “Let’s just go back,” he said, tiredly. “We have a lot to do. Can’t finish any of it sitting around here.”

As they walked back towards the entrance of the park, where Teddy was waiting, Skull dumped the phone into a garbage can. “Fucking _Reborn_ ,” Harry heard him mutter under his breath as he disposed of it. 

“Have regrets about calling?”

Skull blew out a breath and shrugged. “We’ll see, I guess,” he said, scuffing his shoe against the ground. “Too soon to tell. Maybe they’ll wash their hands of me after this, and leave you guys alone. Maybe they’ll keep coming after us because I betrayed them.” 

Harry studied Skull’s face. “You think that’s the only reason they’d come?”

There was a bitter slash to Skull’s downturned lips. “I think they’ve made it perfectly clear that they won’t try to find me for any other reason.”

Harry frowned. “Look, Skull—”

“I think I see Teddy,” Skull interrupted, increasing his pace. “C’mon, Harry. I want to grab something to eat before we head back. My treat.” 

“Right,” Harry muttered to himself, hurrying to keep up. That was it, then. Harry wasn’t likely to see or talk to any of Skull’s weird, mafia-affiliated soulmates ever again. They weren’t going to be a problem. 

Now if only he could manage to actually convince himself of that, and get rid of the small curl of unease that lingered in the back of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this goddamn chapter. 
> 
> some notes! 
> 
> (i actually lost all of my notes for this chapter, so this'll be fun) 
> 
> 1\. the whole 'dementors were phased out of azkaban' thing is, to my current knowledge, actually canon. i have no idea how it happened or where tf they carted the dementors off to (are they dead??? did they die????? h o w) but. it's there & so i decided to run with that little bit of canon and use it for mine own purposes. 
> 
> 2\. the arcobaleno having a forced harmonization is something that i've been so excited to get to..... something abt the changed dynamics that having a bond forced upon them does..... it speaks 2 me. all that resentment n angst n all of them coping poorly w it...... *chefs kiss*. + they have to deal w the arcobaleno curse @ the same time..... wheres my fainting couch i feel a spell coming on 
> 
> 3\. harry, last chapter: haha yeah there are just some things u can't go through with someone w/o bonding with them in some way, yknow?  
> harry, this chapter:  
> harry, this chapter: _not like that_
> 
> 4\. three cookies for anyone who can guess why the calls 2 fon didn’t work out! i was actually originally gonna have them talk to fon but i actually started thinking abt it and was like..... ah that won’t actually work. rip me. reborn ur up. 
> 
> 5\. honest to god, there was actually things i wanted to discuss this chapter in the notes but i lost all of them & my brain has been totally fried for the past few months so. if u have any questions feel free to ask! 
> 
> alright folks a bit of a TMI moment here, feel free to skip past this part if u don't want to know anything about me or if u just don't want to know too _much_ about me, haha. i just feel like i might owe a liiiiittle bit of an explanation for why this took so long, is all, haha. so... in the last few months of 2019 i ran away from an abusive household and the next few months of my life were uh, stressful, to say the least. nice! (i worked as an extra in a movie for a month or so, which was interesting!) but stressful. i didn't have any time nor emotional or mental capacity to write, unfortunately, and i lost a lot of my notes for this chapter & a few others, which made it a little more difficult to get back into it, haha. i'm a lot more settled now, and so! this chapter was finally finished. thank you all for your patience! tmi moment over. 
> 
> i have a tumblr, if any of y'all want to find me over there! i'm @ cinnars.tumblr.com
> 
> thank you all for your lovely comments & kudos! apologies for how long it took me to reply, but i really loved and appreciated every single one. i hope you all are doing well & staying safe rn!! thanks again for your patience. y'all the real mvps.
> 
> EDIT: wait i remembered i actually did have something else to say whoops. to get back into writing this i'd been going through already posted chapters n editing them. so far i've done chapters 1 & 2, but i'm going to be doing the others at some point too. i'm not changing anything major, like plot points or events, but i'm just trying to clean them up a little, haha. trying fix some foreshadowing, wonky phrasing, etc. (fixing old mistakes n making new ones! fantastic) just wanted to let y'all know what's happening!

**Author's Note:**

> im impulse posting this @ like 3 am so there's probably a bunch of mistakes lol. sorry about that! i'll go through later & see if i can fix them. yeehaw.
> 
> but also real genuine question im curious about: if y'all could swap bodies with anyone from the khr or hp verse, who would u pick? i would sell my soul to be a metamorphmagus so i'd pick tonks in a heartbeat tbh


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